


Climbing Up the Walls

by Coyotebee



Category: Social Network (2010), The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
Genre: Community: tsn_kinkmeme, Crossover, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-14
Updated: 2013-04-04
Packaged: 2017-12-05 08:04:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 21,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/720744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coyotebee/pseuds/Coyotebee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After suing Mark, Eduardo discovers his life is linked to Peter Parker, a boy who went missing five years ago. Sean Parker and Peter's aunt believe the boy was him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fill for a fantastic prompt in the kink_meme. Would link if it didn't spoil the plot.

Eduardo hasn’t been to New York City enough to not notice the loud whir of helicopters each time they rove over the cityscape. They weren’t around that summer in 2004 when he was living in the city, talking to middle-aged men about the benefits of advertising their products on Facebook. Well, that was only two years after Spider-Man disappeared. Those psycho monsters he kept at bay took a while to come out at full force and terrorize everyone.

Eduardo’s cell phone chimes. It’s a text from Sean, saying he’s arrived at the hotel’s restaurant. Eduardo’s shocked. Sean told him he’d be at the restaurant seven o’clock, and it’s actually _seven o’clock._

He straightens his suit, confirms to himself that he looks presentable, and exits his hotel suite.

He has to wait for the elevator. Above the door is a flat-screen television, turned to a news channel.

“In the past three years, enrollment to all major New York colleges and universities have plummeted by a whopping 21%. The most major drops are for Columbia University, and Empire State University. Most experts agree that the rise in crime and the Six’s numerous attacks on New York over the past five years has made the city one of the most dangerous to live in...”

Like most, Eduardo believes Spider-Man must have been killed. Wishful thinkers believe he simply quit, which makes Eduardo imagine a superhero retirement home in space. In the case that Spider-Man did quit, Eduardo’s sure he would have come out by now. He hasn’t come out though. That’s why he’s dead.

The elevator arrives. 

“Hey,” Eduardo says to Sean at the restaurant’s bar. He doesn’t bother to smile.

The last time he saw Sean was sometime after the deposition. Dustin and Chris invited Eduardo to a party -- Dustin unofficially dubbed it the “No Hard Feelings” Party -- and Sean bounced in and yelled, “Eduardooo, my man!” like he wasn’t the guy who loaded the gun Mark fired at him. Fortunately, another pack of people were in need of his magnificent presence and he was gone in two minutes.

A couple week ago, Sean e-mailed Eduardo and said he was going to be in New York City for a few months, and that Eduardo should meet up with him. Eduardo ignored it, but the e-mails were persistent and the words inside patient: “Would really like to talk to you... Give me a call,” and “Eduardo, give me a chance. It’s important.”

As opposed as he was, Eduardo agreed to meet up. He needed to be in New York anyway. Today, he had a meeting in Manhattan about a new project he wants to invest in, and tomorrow he’s going to have dinner with his father. It’s their biannual dinner. It’s all the time each of them is willing to allot to each other.

“Hey. Don’t sit down because I’m taking you somewhere,” Sean says with that annoying combo of sharpness and charm.

“I’m sure whatever it is you have to say can be said right here.”

Sean raises his eyebrows. “No, man, it can’t.”

“What’s this about, Sean?” It’s a question Eduardo’s been asking since the first e-mail. Sean’s kept him in dark and it has worked because Eduardo’s come to him in person, wanting the answer.

Sean turns to the nearby bartender. “Sorry, something came up and I gotta head out. Beautiful place though! First class.” He thumps his fists lightly on the tabletop and springs up.

“Why did you want to meet?” Eduardo asks.

“One step at a time,” Sean says and pushes Eduardo to the exit.

“Don’t bother with being charming and mysterious,” Eduardo says. 

“Damn, Eduardo. Relax,” Sean says. “I asked you to meet me because something huge is going on, huge, and I can’t tell you because there’s no way you’d believe me yet. It has nothing to do with Facebook, by the way. Now let’s go for a drive in my car, my friend. We’re going to Forest Hills.”


	2. Chapter 2

During the ride, Sean asks him the standard questions about work and the progress of Eduardo’s life in general. Eduardo tells him about his move to Seattle last winter and what it’s like working for Amazon Kindle. Sean’s not paying full attention to him. He nods at random parts of the conversation. The most obvious thing that shows his distracted state though, is that he’s letting Eduardo talk for this long. A monologue about his opinions and his life’s adventures was due after Eduardo finished his first sentence.

Eduardo has to bring it to the front: “You seem nervous.”

“I’m not nervous, I’m... in the process of my mind being blown. It’s a big day,” Sean says and taps the steering wheel with his fingers.

Eduardo sighs, exasperated by the mystery of their meeting.

“Can you just tell me what’s –”

“Not yet.”

A siren wails a few streets away. A lady in bright pink heels walks by the car.

“Does this place look familiar?” Sean says once they’re weaving through rows of town houses, where not even one tree fits in the front yards.

“No. I’ve never been here,” Eduardo says.

It reminds him a little of White Plains though, based on that one time Eduardo visited Mark and his family. It was the greenery, the brick, the shops that was reminding him. He guesses any residential area near New York would. Without any reason to venture into them, he has no other point of reference. Sean pulls over.

“Who are we visiting?” Eduardo asks, peering at the houses.

“A relative of mine.”

Eduardo rubs his forehead as he gets out of the car. “Seriously, what’s happening? Am I meeting your grandmother for tea or something?”

“You’re gonna meet a lady named May Parker,” he states.

He walks around the car, turns Eduardo and himself to face the house with the number “36” on its door. He takes Eduardo’s elbow.

“Holy shit... Here we go,” Sean mutters.

As they approach the tiny patio, an old woman opens the front door. She’s thin. Her long hair is dyed black. She’s gazing at Eduardo and her eyes get watery, and she covers her mouth with her dainty fingers.

“Hello... Hello, Eduardo,” she whispers.

“Hi...” Eduardo says and looks over to Sean in concern.

She cries quietly. This would make most people awkward, not knowing what to do, but Eduardo just knows the right thing to do is to stay back. Besides, he has his state of confusion to deal with.

“It’s all right, May,” Sean says and puts a hand on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” Mrs. Parker says to Eduardo, voice breaking up. “I knew I couldn’t hold my emotions back...”

“It’s fine. I’m great at explaining things,” Sean says brightly. “Let’s go into the living room.”

Eduardo raises his eyebrows at him, wanting to show how weirded out he is right now. They step into the house. It’s really quiet and from that, Eduardo can tell that this lady lives alone. At least the house isn’t vast. There couldn’t be a big eerie silence in it, not like in the Miami mansion Eduardo grew up in. 

They enter the living room, and Mrs. Parker picks up an envelope from a shelf. They settle themselves into the chairs.

“First, look at these,” Mrs. Parker says and hands Eduardo the envelope.

As he opens it, he feels the woman gaze at his face.

In the envelope are photographs. Photographs of... him? The first photo shows him as his teenage self, standing with his arms outstretched, the White House behind him. The next is a school picture (he’s not in his uniform). Eduardo flips quickly to the third photo, and it shows him again, this time in between Mrs. Parker and older white-haired man, smiling away on a beach.

Eduardo’s hands start shaking. He goes through the other photos faster. They all have him at different ages. Seven, maybe. Ten. Four. Fourteen. Eighteen, and looking basically like he does now. He’s never been to any of these places, or been with the people in them.

“Is this a prank?” Eduardo stares Sean down. Computer graphics do amazing stuff. Sean would know people who are good at it.

“No, man. What would be the point?” Sean says.

“These... These pictures aren’t me. Who is this?” 

“May’s nephew, Peter Parker. He was born here in New York,” Sean says, then leans over Eduardo and points to the White House photograph. “In this picture, he was sixteen. Right, May?”

Mrs. Parker has her hands over her mouth again. She nods.

“He went missing when he was nineteen, sophomore year of college. FIve years ago,” Sean says.

The pieces come together. In front of him is a sad grieving lady who really wants her nephew to be alive.

“I’m sorry, miss. I’m not your missing nephew,” Eduardo says. “I’m Eduardo Saverin. I grew up in Brazil and then moved to Miami when I was eleven.”

“You’re my nephew... You look just like him,” Mrs. Parker whispers. Tears are dripping down her cheeks again.

“No, I’m not. I’m so sorry,” Eduardo says and reaches across the space to pat her knee.

“Then who are your parents?” she asks.

“Nathan and Laurinda Saverin.” Whenever Eduardo states their names, he’s aware that Nathan doesn’t prompt a foreign last name like Saverin. Somewhere up the family tree, there was a 100% Brazilian Saverin. His father was a born and bred American Saverin who went back to the motherland and found a wife there too.

“Are they alive?”

“Only my father. My mother died when I was five months old...” Eduardo replies. “Why did you ask me that?” It’s bizarre that she would know to ask.

Mrs. Parker shrugs.

“Because you shouldn’t have living parents,” Sean says. “Peter Parker’s parents died in a plane crash.”

Eduado doesn’t want to call Sean out with the poor woman in the room. He’s very conscious of Sean’s crazy side, where he houses the belief that aliens will invade on the day of the Mayan apocalypse. He sticks with persuading the old woman.

“Mrs... Mrs. Parker,” Eduardo says and places his hand on her knee again. “I’m not Peter. I don’t mean to hurt you with what I’m saying to you.”

“She has more proof,” Sean says.

He goes over to the television and sticks a VHS into the VCR (yes, this is an old person’s home). Eduardo protests and Sean easily ignores him.

“Uncle Ben, just hold it steady, that’s all you gotta do,” Peter Parker says from the screen. Eduardo is captivated immediately. He goes right over to the television. The shot is closed in on Peter’s face. He’s peering beyond the camera at someone, grinning a little. The boy looks _exactly_ like him, God, has the same number of wrinkles around his eyes, same nose, same shade of skin...

“Come into the kitchen... Hey, stop filming up my nose!” Peter says.

The kid has his _voice_ too.

Eduardo’s brain might explode. “Stop... stop it, Sean. That isn’t me. No way...”

Sean does so as he states, “Eduardo, everything about him, the way he looks is _you_. On top of that, he sounds like you and moves like you.”

“That’s... a twin or something.”

“You and Peter have different parents.”

“Well, I don’t know then! It’s not me though. I was at living in Miami when I was a teenager.”

Mrs. Parker stands up, takes a deep breath, looks right at Eduardo. “You can go, dear. Go. You need time to take it in. Take him home, Sean.”

Eduardo’s glad she’s letting him leave. He heads for the door.

“Come back whenever you’d like, Pe— Eduardo,” Mrs. Parker says. “I hope you do.”

She gives him the batch of photographs.


	3. Chapter 3

In the car, Eduardo runs his hands along his seat belt over and over again.

“What the hell is going on?” he says. “How can a person look just like you, with different parents? And happen to both live at the same time?”

“I personally think you’re two people at the same time,” Sean says, keeping his eyes on the road as he drives.

“That makes no sense! No explanation is making sense.”

“Think about New York. We’re in a city that regularly features a flying man called ‘The Vulture.’ A flying man. That’s in the news a lot, isn’t it? Oh yeah, and we’ve got the Green Goblin around. Kraven too. If you have an alternate life as someone else, I could believe it.”

It was fair point, but Eduardo isn’t convinced.

“How are you related to that lady?” Eduardo asks.

“She’s a cousin of some sort. I know for sure that you being her nephew makes you my third cousin.”

“Except I’m not Peter Parker.”

“Whatever. It’s so distant, you may as well stay a random high-strung Brazilian to me. All we share are a pair of great-great grandparents.”

“Did you know May Parker from before?”

“No. She actually contacted me. She called into Plaxo... She said this whole search for you started when she saw your picture in a business mag. After that, she looked up Facebook’s history to learn more about you. She spotted my last name and wondered if I was related to her and here we are. The End.”

“I feel really sorry for her. She thinks she has her nephew back.”

“I’m happy for her because she _does_ have her nephew back,” Sean says. After a pause, he adds, “You have to figure this shit out. Like, where were you when Peter Parker was alive? When was he born?”

“I’m not discussing this with you. Just drive,” Eduardo states. He refuses to share anything this intense with Sean Parker.

“Eduardo, can you tone down the hostility? F-Y-I, whatever’s happened between you and Mark barely has anything to do with me. I’m not the one who supposedly betrayed your trust.”

“You took over my job.”

“Mark wanted me on the team.”

“Which is why the both of you piss me off.”

“What are you wearing right now? Prada? Armani? You’re sitting here, wearing that suit you bought with your settlement money, and we still piss you off?”

“The whole thing goes beyond a business deal, all right? That’s all I’m gonna say.”

“Yeah, okay. Look... I’m gonna be up front and say that I’m willing to be civil with you. We don’t need to be friends, but I’d like it if we stopped trying to verbally decapitate each other. The lawsuit is over.”

Okay, sure. It’s the early fall of 2007. The lawsuit was resolved a year ago. Being rude is a little unreasonable. Eduardo nods.

“Anyway, you’ve got a bigger issue here, you know,” Sean adds.

Eduardo mostly just aggravated and embarrassed with himself for not being over it. He graduated, started another phase in his life by moving to Seattle, and a year has passed since the deposition, and three years since his freak out at Facebook headquarters, and he’s still sore from what Mark did.

He’s been self-reflective about it and gets that Mark’s the person he was closest to, so yeah, he’s riding aftershocks. There was a time when they get along which was before Facebook. Eduardo admired Mark’s quips, all his brain cells, how ambitious he could be... Nine times out of ten, people who met Mark were put off by him; he was a nerd with a superiority complex. Not to Eduardo. He saw Mark as that pet who bites at you and everyone else, and for that, you hate it until you realize it’s biting because it’s scared and wants to survive. Eduardo’s innate compassion for those types had him lifting up his hands, going “Hey, I’m not gonna hurt you.”

Feeling like an outsider himself, Eduardo saw the insecurity Mark was based in. It was just one of those cases where you do everything you would’ve wanted someone else to do for you – Eduardo complimented him and supported him in any way he could. 

Mark was confused by him, annoyed, and possibly... afraid? Eduardo’s kindness tested what platonic was, and Eduardo, well. He wasn’t going to be all Mark-y about it and deny his feelings. He just refrains from saying the word “love” out loud in relation to Mark. He said to his lawyer that he, you know, “cared” and “deeply admired” Mark. Um. Anyway.

All his little caring gestures made no difference in what Mark was, and Eduardo didn’t notice that in time. Mark wanted to be revered, and he trampled over those who got in the way. Trampling over his best friend, he had no trouble doing.

***

Eduardo keeps waking up during the night, getting trapped in thoughts about May Parker and her nephew. He turns on the lamp at one point in order to study the photographs he has of the family.

Peter. Just like him. Seems like he hit puberty at the same age too. He’s a foot taller between the picture of him at fourteen and at fifteen, and he suddenly has pimples colonizing his forehead. Fifteen was the only year in Eduardo’s life in which he got bangs, just to hide it. Peter seems to not have cared, but the bangs show up later anyway and stay. Eduardo looked better, he’d like to think. The boy in the photos dressed in the usual baggy teenage boy attire and didn’t comb his hair. Teenaged Eduardo always wore nicely-fitted sweaters and got his hair trimmed every two months.

Eduardo manages to fall asleep, then wakes up yet again. It’s a little before six o’clock now. To satisfy his curiosity, he pops open his laptop and searches for articles on Peter. The fifth match is New York City’s missing persons website.

The chosen photo for the site is the most recent Eduardo’s seen so far. Yep, Peter’s hair is messy... Other than that, Eduardo is looking at himself, current version. It takes a moment to get over how eerie it is and move onto he caption below it.

_Peter Parker. Birth date: August 15, 1982. Last seen: April 25, 2002. Age: 19. Current age: 25._

A few things come into Eduardo’s mind, the first being that he was born in March of 1982, not August. His March birthday made a huge difference to his one of his years at Harvard. He turned twenty-one before the last semester ended and bought an eighteen-year-old Mark his first bottle of beer and became his regular supplier.

The next contradiction is that in April 2002 when Peter went missing, Eduardo was in Miami, getting through his final months of high school.

He thinks about what Peter would have been doing at that time... He would have been in his sophomore year of college, despite being the same age as Eduardo. Eduardo should have been a sophomore in April 2002, however two years were added to his schooling. Brazil’s education system was incompatible with the States’, so that got him an additional year, and then one more was tagged on for extra A.P. classes that would ensure his acceptance into Harvard.

Eduardo wonders what college Peter went to. An Ivy League? If Eduardo had the brains for an Ivy League school, Peter must have too.

Eduardo scrolls through more results on Peter. He hits one that reads “... absence of Peter Parker, Gwen Stacy’s boyfriend...” It’s from a newspaper.

_A memorial service for Gwen Stacy was held at Empire State University on Monday, attended by her friends and family as well as staff and students. This young woman will be remembered as a caring friend and excellent student... Unfortunately, the absence of Peter Parker, Gwen Stacy’s boyfriend who has been missing since April 25, cast more gloom on the proceedings..._

That’s it. Eduardo’s sucked in. He types in Gwen Stacy’s name. There are more articles about her than there are about Peter. They all report on her death.

_The victim has been identified as Gwen Stacy. Two stab wounds punctured her stomach..._

_The body of Gwen Stacy was found on April 23, 2002... it has been determined as homicide. No suspects have been found._

Eduardo’s left feeling disturbed. He doesn’t look at the other articles – he’s learned enough. He gets another idea though: He’ll look up Peter and Gwen on Facebook. Mark hadn’t invent it yet when they were around, but Eduardo’s seen those “In Memoriam” groups. He logs onto Facebook and he turns out to be right:

“In memory of Gwen Stacy, Peter Parker & Harry Osborn” a result reads. Eduardo makes a mental reminder to research Harry Osborn.

The wall is filled with heartbroken messages and inspirational quotes posted by people Eduardo’s never met. There’s Troy Billings, Mary Jane Watson, Catherine Morland... The admins of the group are listed as being that Mary Jane girl, as well as people Eduardo assumes are Gwen’s parents: Anthony and Patricia Stacy. He clicks on the photos section, what he’s most intrigued by. There are twenty pictures in there, and Eduardo goes through them all.

Most of them are of Gwen. Peter had great taste; she was gorgeous. Her nose was adorably perked up, and she looked natural – no salon tan, no highlights in her hair. The other pictures show a variety of Peter-Gwen-Harry Osborn combinations which occasionally include other people. Mary Jane Watson is tagged in two, and someone called Flash Thompson is as well.

Eduardo chuckles at comments left by Flash. Under a photograph of him, Peter, and Harry, he wrote, “BROS BEIN BROMANTIC” or “THE DAY 3 BROS BRO’ED IT DOWWWN.” The picture with the most comments is one of Peter, Gwen and Harry only, standing outside a stone archway. They’re happy in it.

All the photos make Eduardo kind of sad, yet the one that gets to him most is the one that captured Peter and Gwen sitting on a floor somewhere. Peter’s hugging her from behind, and they’re both smiling brightly into the camera.

Eduardo wants to say it’s sympathy for a couple who lost their lives that’s piercing him. His sadness would be less absurd if it was even envy – because has he ever been in a relationship like that? No. Truthfully, Eduardo’s sad because Peter looks like him and he can’t keep from imagining himself in that situation. Misplaced self-pity is affecting him.

Somewhere near the hotel, a helicopter drifts noisily overhead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I want it to be clear that the TASM story DID happen in my fic's universe, but much earlier than the 2012-ish time period I assume the movie is set in. Peter would've had his showdown with the Lizard in 1999-2000... uh yeah, JUST GO WITH IT GUYS KTHNX.
> 
> 2\. Is everyone making sense of the timeline of Eduardo's life and Peter's? I can post a timeline in the notes of later chapters, if not. :)


	4. Chapter 4

It’s mid-morning when Eduardo gets up and showers. He doesn’t need to do any work today. All that’s on his schedule is dinner with his father. Sean’s appearance yesterday has had the shockingly beneficial effect of mentally prepping Eduardo for the agitation his father will bring.

They should be okay since their encounters are so infrequent. The distance is a deliberate choice. It wasn’t before, for Eduardo. During life in Brazil and Florida, he tried hard to do the father-and-son bonding. Mr. Saverin left for weeks at a time on business trips; he felt his absence and wanted to remedy it.

His father was never into Eduardo’s efforts, the plans for movie nights and homemade dinners. In the evenings they spent together, Mr. Saverin used them to scold Eduardo about his grades and all his other personal flaws. Eventually, Eduardo’s enthusiasm to build a relationship dissolved. By his first year of Harvard, Eduardo was staying in Boston for most breaks. The next year the rift was monumental because Mr. Saverin moved permanently to New York City for his new job as C.F.O. of Gregson Corporation. Eduardo received no invitation from him to visit his new place, neither was he wishing for one. They got that indifferent.

Eduardo checks his work e-mails. They’re hard to concentrate on. Most of his brain is being used to reconcile Peter Parker’s being. Say Eduardo _is_ Peter Parker, that would mean that Eduardo is made up, memories fake. Freaky. Just to make his past is really, really solid to himself, he’ll prove that he was real and continues to be real.

Eduardo does this by searching for people he knew in high school on Facebook.

He’s never friended anyone from high school. He had a couple friends he should’ve stayed in touch with through college, but... he wasn’t that close to them, really.

He sends requests to ten people. That would make his friend count go from six to a whole sixteen. Eduardo has Mark, Dustin and Chris on there, two Phoenix Club friends he hasn’t seen since graduation, and a guy he dated for two months. Facebook is great at emphasizing how unsociable you are. Whatever. Eduardo hardly uses Facebook anyway, not that anyone cares since he has thousands of friend requests by virtue of being a co-founder.

He remembers to look up Harry Osborn. In minutes, Eduardo learns he died in an accident a couple months before Gwen, in February of the same year. A building caught fire. Wow, Peter spread bad luck like it was pollen.

***

Sean calls twice in the middle of Eduardo’s lunch. The first time Eduardo doesn’t pick up because, well, it’s Sean. He wants to keep him at the edges of his life. He calls again thirty seconds later, and Eduardo concludes he may as well deal with him now.

"Hey! Just checking up on you. You okay?"

“Yeah.”

“Are you going to... your aunt’s house?” Sean says and Eduardo can hear he’s speaking through a slight smirk.

“ _Sean._ ”

“Calm down. Are you going?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why wouldn’t you? You need to find out who this Peter Parker kid was.”

“I know the basics from online articles.”

“Online articles don’t tell you much. You need a timeline of his life, man. It might give you answers to why you’re split in two.”

“True.”

“I’ve been thinking about your situation...”

Eduardo braces himself for the batshit crazy.

“What if there are two different realities, and something... _sciency_ went haywire, and they merged together in one reality, making two of you co-exist?”

“You sound insane.”

“I’m going with the logic of cause and effect! If the effect is insane – there being two of you – then it must be from a cause that’s insane.”

“Do you have any theories that are less sci-fi?”

“Yeah. You know how you said you could have a twin and I disagreed? I’ve changed my mind on it – it could be true. Peter could have been adopted by the Parker parents. I know you have different birth dates, but what if it was those birth certificates were tampered with?”

“My father would have mentioned me having a twin.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot how tight you guys are. You go to ball games and fish during the summer.”

“He would’ve told me something like that,” Eduardo said sternly. This is another source of his annoyance with Sean. He assumes he knows Eduardo based on their few meetings and the little facts Mark’s undoubtedly told him.

“Well, Eduardo! You’re left with my Merging Alternate Realities Theory.”

“Then I guess I’m heading to May Parker’s house.”

“Good,” Sean says. “Keep my up to date, all right? This could be explosive. I’m invested in this.”

“Even though it’s my business?”

Eduardo means for it to be serious. Sean just makes the phoneline crackle from his laughter. “Eduardo, don’t cut me out. I’m your cousin! We’re family, and this is a family matter,” he says half-jokingly.

“You’re not my – never mind. Later.”

Eduardo thumps on the end-call button. Christ. Sean pisses him off so much.

* * *

Back in his hotel suite, Eduardo checks if anyone accepted his friend requests. So far, one has and she’s online. Kate Westin. Eduardo messages her.

_Hi, Kate._

_hey are you the guy i met at the wedding last weekend_

_No, I went to Gulliver Prep with you._

_oh thats cool. Sorry i don’t remember you. ???_

_We sat with each other in Chem and Trig and talked every day that semester. Remember?_

_you must think i’m someone else, sry. :( I sat with jamie sung in junior chem for sure._

Eduardo clicks into her profile in case she isn’t the right Kate Westin. She is though. She’s friends with a bunch of people from Gulliver Preparatory School.

_In Chem? With Mrs. Erikson?_

_yeah_

_I’ll jog your memory a little. I was the boy from Brazil. I taught you some Portuguese words._

_srsly i don’t remember you at all. i dont recognize you or your name......._

Eduardo closes his laptop. Was this really happening? How could someone forget him?

***

During the ride to Forest Hills, he tries to find an explanation. He’s a Harvard student who graduated _magna cum laude_ , he should understand this. Most likely possibility: Kate Westin has an abysmal memory. Then again, you need a great memory to handle Gulliver’s exams. The abysmal memory theory doesn’t offer any true closure. It gets Eduardo closer to believing he doesn’t exist.

_Didn’t_ exist, really. He’s in a smelly cab freaking out right now. He does exist. He’s there. In his typical suit. Rolling down the window. Breathing autumn air. Hearing the wheels of cars roll along.

If he didn’t go to Gulliver, how did he get into Harvard? You need transcripts to attend any college. He couldn’t just pop into a Harvard class one day. The professors would have marked an Eduardo Saverin essay, and noticed the name wasn’t on the register. Or did he go to some other high school? Kate only proved he wasn’t at that particular institution, technically...

But his father paid the damn tuition. God, his _father._ Why did Eduardo miss that obvious link to his past? He did attend Gulliver. Mr. Saverin signed thousand-dollar cheques to that school. Yeah, he attended Gulliver.

Still, it’s totally bizarre there was someone just like him, wandering around New York. He puts on his figurative deerstalker hat and pipe. The investigation continues.

* * *

Eduardo knocks on May Parker’s door.

“Can you tell me more about Peter?” Eduardo asks the moment she opens it.

Mrs. Parker leads him through the living room and into the kitchen, offering coffee, and Eduardo asking how she’s been. She has him sit at her small kitchen table.

“I looked Peter up online last night. I’m sorry about what happened to him. And to his friends.”

“It’s been hard,” Mrs. Parker says, her back turned to him. She’s pouring the coffee.

“I imagine.” Eduardo feels real sympathy then. Like when he first came in yesterday, he notices the quiet of the house.

“Do you think you’re him?”

“I’m trying to figure that out,” Eduardo replies. Mrs. Parker slides a coffee mug in front of him. The skin on her knuckles is loose and thin. As Eduardo stirs in milk and sugar, he asks, “What was he like?”

Mrs. Parker rubs the handle of her mug and smiles. “Your typical teenage boy. Very sweet for the most part and had an emotional side to him, an angry one. For good reasons.” Her smile drops. “He didn’t have his mother and father around, and he felt... abandoned by them. Unloved, maybe... He wasn’t put in mine and my husband’s care because they died, you know. Richard and Mary brought him before the crash... Peter remembered them leaving him here.”

“Why did they leave him?”

“Protection. His father had a dangerous job at Oscorp, knew dangerous people. His parents couldn’t keep him safe.”

“Oh,” Eduardo says. A parent can leave their child out of love? Definitely not the case with his father.

“Then by the time he was seventeen, he only had me left. His uncle died suddenly.”

“Wow... Wow, that’s a lot for a kid to handle.”

“Yes. My husband – his name was Ben – really was a father to him. Peter wasn’t the same since,” Mrs. Parker says, then takes a sip of coffee. “The investigators suggested Peter could have committed suicide. With all that grief, and then with the death of his girlfriend and best friend... They think he must have done something to himself. Thrown himself into a river maybe. Something like that.”

“Do you believe that?”

“At first, I did. If Peter was that broken up, I wouldn’t have known. In his senior year of high school, he became so guarded. He’d get into fights, come home beaten up, and wouldn’t tell me anything about it. That’s what he was like once he was off on his own at college too,” Mrs. Parker explains. She then shakes her head a little. “But... no. I don’t think he killed himself. He would have stayed for me. He would have known his uncle would’ve wanted him to stay with me. Gwen would’ve wanted the same too.”

She looks at him and Eduardo gets nervous. This whole time, she hasn’t looked at him.

“He’s alive...” she whispers. “You’re the proof. You’re my nephew.”

She reaches out and slides her fingers through Eduardo’s hair.

“Mrs. Parker...”

Eduardo doesn’t want to be unkind by pulling away or unkind to himself because he has rarely felt motherly touch. There was the teacher who pressed her cool palm on his feverish forehead, and then a nanny who washed his face sometimes. He lets Mrs. Parker rest her hand on his shoulder.

“Something happened to you. You were taken away... Your father’s enemies... They must have done it,” Mrs. Parker said.

“I’m... I can’t say that I’m Peter. As far as I know, I’m Eduardo Saverin. I remember so many things about Eduardo Saverin,” Eduardo says as gently as he can. “Come on, Mrs. Parker... You need to think clearly.”

She takes her hand off him. “You’re right.”

She peers at him without self-consciousness. Eduardo knows she’s trying to see him, not her nephew.

“Do you want to see his room?” she asks.

“Sure.”


	5. Chapter 5

“I cleared out most of Peter's things, gave his books and clothes away... Most of what I’ve kept is in the closet,” Mrs. Parker says.

The bedroom has photographs, framed and unframed, everywhere on the walls. They show the city streets, bridges, snow, random bursts of light, closeups of antique furniture...

“Did he take these himself?”

“Yes. He was a bit of a photographer.”

“Cool.” Eduardo looks at the ones with people in them. There’s Ben and May in one, sitting on a couch.

Even though they were an aunt and uncle, when it came to family life, Eduardo considers Peter to be have been luckier than him. Eduardo has no idea what it’s like to have a parent care about him. Dead mother. Absent father.

“Peter and Gwen, right?” Eduardo says, pointing to the framed photo on the desk. It’s the one on Facebook that has Peter behind her, his arms wrapped around her waist.

“Yes.”

“How long did they go out?”

“I’m not sure,” Mrs. Parker replies with a chuckle. “By the time he finally introduced me to her, they were probably together for quite some time. They met in high school, I know that. They went to Midtown Science.”

“Did the police catch her killer?”

“No. The case went cold.”

“God...” Eduardo mutters, staring at the picture and trying not to imagine her damaged body.

A cork board hangs above the desk. More photos. What catches Eduardo’s eye is a crinkled square of paper. The words “Love you, bug boy” are written neatly on it. Oh. Pet names. Eduardo sided with Mark long ago by stating that they were sappy... and once Chris and Dustin learned this fact, they called them “sprinkle bear and love tart” for two months.

Mrs. Parker opens up the closet for him. There’s a scribbled-over skateboard in there and a few awards. Eduardo shuffles a box from the top shelf. He and Mrs. Parker settle on the bed and dig through it.

Camera lens, filters, envelopes of negatives, screwdrivers... A weird gadget. It’s a little metal box with multi-coloured lights on it and a microchip attached on the bottom.

“I think that’s a... pencil sharpener?” Mrs. Parker says.

Eduardo picks up another robotic thing which they determine to be an extremely impractical metal bookmark with pointless copper wire running through it. The third gadget found is cube-shaped, and Mrs. Parker definitively says is a lock.

“He constructed those himself,” she says.

“Really?”

“Yes. He was incredibly intelligent. Like you.”

Eduardo gives her a grin.

He digs around the box more and this time comes out with a tiny unopened container with minuscule slips of metal in it. A sticker is on the lid: “Oscorp Industries Biocable.” Eduardo wonders if it’s used in one of Peter’s gadgets. Mrs. Parker says she doesn’t know.

“So. What’s your life like, Eduardo?” Mrs. Parker eventually asks.

Eduardo puts the biocable back in the box. “Um, well... I work for a company in Seattle that’s about to launch an e-reader. I invest in a few companies here and there on the side. It’s why I’m here in New York.”

In the box: An acceptance letter into Empire State University. A toy frog.

“Do you have any siblings?”

“No. It’s just me.”

Two other toy frogs. A CD by a band he’s never heard of.

“Do you have someone special?” Mrs. Parker smiles mischievously.

Eduardo snorts. “No, unfortunately.”

“She’ll come along.”

_Or he_ , Eduardo doesn’t bother mentioning.

The bottom layer of the box is made of several paperbacks with scientific titles.

“He liked science, didn’t he?”

“Yes, very.”

“I was really good in my science classes too. I would have taken a science program in university, but my father wanted it to be business.” 

“What’s your father like?”

“Very... Very driven,” he says. His diplomacy is flawless and damn stunning. “Expects the best from everyone, including me. He’s an industrialist here in New York.”

“Are you two close?”

Eduardo pauses. He usually gets edgy on this subject, but Mrs. Parker is such a... such a _mother_ that he’s compelled to bring the barrier down.

“To be honest... We don’t have the best relationship. It comes from him really wanting me to succeed in life. It’s all right though,” he says and, oh, here comes the barrier: “He gave me a lot of independence growing up. It’s what I’m used to. Being on my own.”

Mrs. Parker nods. A sad smile appears on her face. “For me, I don’t think being on my own is something I’ll ever be used to.”

Eduardo brushes her arm, wishing he could drop his pride for a second and go, “Never mind what I just said. I feel the same way as you.” She avoids his gaze.

“Don’t mind me...” she mutters.

Eduardo goes back to the box, and spots the final object of interest. It’s a glass vial with the corpse of a bug in it.

“A spider?” Eduardo cackles, fully comprehending how weird Peter must have been.

“Oh,” Mrs. Parker says, starting to laugh as well. “Probably left over from some experiment of his.”

“This is... kinda gross!”

Once he’s put away the box, Eduardo asks if there are anymore recent photos of Peter. He’s curious about what Peter did with his life, if anything paralleled his. So far the links are that they’re both smart and have daddy issues.

“I only have a handful. He would have a lot on his laptop though,” Mrs. Parker replies.

She gestures to the desk. The laptop is there like Peter’s going to come any moment and use it.

“Can I check it out?”

“I don’t have his password.”

“You have a Sean Parker.”

So Eduardo proposes that he take the laptop back to his hotel and have Sean come over and use his hacking powers on it. Wanting to see the photographs anyway, Mrs. Parker agrees to it. It’s the late afternoon now. Needing to meet his father, Eduardo says goodbye to her.

* * *

Why wearing a suit all the time is beneficial: The situations in which your father changes the dinner location and chooses a high-class restaurant instead.

In a three-piece suit, Mr. Saverin sits solidly upright. He’s compensating for his sagging face. Pouchy cheeks, pouchy eyes, pouchy chin. He could’ve been a stereotype of businessman, what with his age and receding hairline, except he’s kept himself fit so he lacks the ponch for it. 

They get through the basics of conversation within two minutes. Mr. Saverin, as usual, isn’t in-depth about his adventures as C.F.O. of Gregson, and Eduardo doesn’t say much about his job at Kindle.

Eduardo sprinkles the talk with Portuguese. It’s rare when he can speak it. He’s found a co-worker who likes talking in Portuguese with him, and that’s it. His father is the only other person who understands it, and understands is all. Mr. Saverin barely speaks it with him, not even when they lived in São Paulo.

Their forty-dollar peanut-sized meals come. Eduardo gives up searching for any new topics of conversation. His mind is on his visit with Mrs. Parker anyway. Oh, but he could solve something right here...

“About how much did it cost for me to go to Gulliver?” Eduardo asks. It’s not an answer he cares about, the sole purpose being to mention the school.

“A lot.”

“It was worth it. I had a great education,” Eduardo says.

“Yes. That’s why I wanted you enrolled there.”

So. That’s settled. His father isn’t confused. Eduardo definitely went to Gulliver and Kate Westin has a truly abysmal memory.

They go quiet again for a while. Other than borderline tyrannical, Eduardo would describe his father as being “a man of few words.” When a disapproving look suffices, Mr. Saverin says nothing. While being quiet gives people the impression of shyness, it makes Mr. Saverin ominous. He’ll say things coolly, seem passive, though he’s really a volcano. Everyone around senses the danger of the inevitable eruption. Eduardo’s experienced his fair share.

“What have you been spending your settlement money on?” Mr. Saverin asks. Not an ideal question. The Facebook ordeal and everything related to it is one of their many touchy subjects. Mr. Saverin was especially silent during the lawsuit. It got creepy. Eduardo figures he was so angry that if he screamed it all out, he would’ve had a stroke. Going for a quiet rage probably elongated his life.

“The only major thing I’ve been using it on is rent for my new apartment.”

“Invest in a house.”

“I don’t know if I’ll be in Seattle permanently. I’ve been thinking of moving here sometime, actually,” Eduardo states. He’s now steered the conversation further into the danger zone.

“You are not moving here. It’s for the big leagues,” Mr. Saverin says coolly. “Besides, New York is dangerous. There are these stupidly-named circus freaks flying around. It’s the wealthy people they’ve been targeting.”

“That’s only been the Vulture.” Eduardo sighs.

“It’s dangerous, no matter who you are. I’m only here because my business is here.”

Eduardo has no patience tonight, too much weirdness has happened. He starts arguing.

“It’s not like Electro or whoever is going to attack, you know, the quaint neighbourhood of Park Slope or Forest Hills or wherever I chose to live. They go right for Manhattan.”

Mr. Saverin’s eyes flicker. “Forest Hills. That’s a random place to mention.”

“So is...” Eduardo glances upward in thought. “Hoboken.”

His father leans back in his chair. Being very imposing, the move changes the feel of the whole booth they’re sitting in. 

“Have you been to Forest Hills?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“A friend of mine lives there. I visit him occasionally.” He has to lie, he’s not about to get into why he visited Mrs. Parker. “Why? Is it socially uncouth for someone of our financial status to be there?”

“No.”

Eduardo knows his father won’t explain any further. “Anyway, I’m not about to buy a house in a city I might not live in.”

Mr. Saverin quirks an eyebrow, and gives him a contemptuous stare-down.

Eduardo decides that for their next dinner, they don’t need to talk. The only requirement is that they both occupy the same ten square feet of space. 

***

Sean slides a CD into Peter’s laptop. It’s a little after nine o’clock at night, and Sean shocked Eduardo once again by promising he’d be at the hotel at nine and then arriving on time.

After some mysterious typing, Sean says, “Presto” and Peter’s desktop is shining out at them. The background is boring black.

“Now we can find out what kind of porn he liked to watch,” Sean says.

Eduardo would have laughed at this if it came from anyone less aggravating than Sean. Eduardo delves into the pictures folder. Inside it is a giant list of other folders.

Eduardo finds more photographs that don’t tell him anything. There’s landscapes of New York, and portraits of Gwen, a whole folder of that Flash guy posing with a basketball, being jocky, stuff like that. Eduardo wants to know locations, where Peter has been.

“That looks like Spider-Man’s suit,” Sean says. Eduardo has brought up a whole folder of suit designs. They’re intensely mathematical for what are essentially sewing patterns.

“Yeah, well, Peter had a little spider in a vial in his bedroom. He was probably a fan like Dustin is...” Eduardo says and goes to the next folder. “Look, he’s even got scans of newspaper articles about Spider-Man and his enemies. The Green Goblin... Electro...”

“Pretty hardcore.”

Seeing as it’s hard to not be intrigued by beings who defy laws of nature, nearly everyone in the world has a mild interest in Spider-Man and the other superhumans. But Eduardo agrees with Sean that Peter would be classified as a Pretty Hardcore fan. Dustin’s made it to pure Hardcore. Dustin, not caring if anyone was really listening, was always sharing his theories on Spider-Man’s DNA, his identity, and the physics behind his web swinging.

Eduardo hits a folder titled “Graduation 2000.”

“Holy shit,” Eduardo says and lurches his head closer to the screen. All in one photo: Gwen, a blonde woman (probably Mrs. Stacy), Peter, May Parker, Harry. And with an arm around Harry – 

“What is it?”

“That’s my father.”

“Nathan Saverin?”

Eduardo keeps staring at his father, making sure and... It really is him. The man is standing the same way as his father, has his hair styled the same. The teeth have the right pearliness. Every feature duplicates those of Mr. Saverin’s.

Eduardo fumbles for the phone. As it rings, he paces at the end of the bed.

“Mrs. Parker?”

“Speaking. Is that you, Eduardo?”

“Yeah, yeah, what – who’s the man you were with at Peter’s graduation? There’s – there’s a picture here on his laptop of this guy standing with Peter and his friends. W-who is he?”

“Harry’s father, Norman Osborn. Are you okay?”

“What? What did you say?”

“Norman Osborn. He’s Harry’s father.”

Eduardo hangs up.


	6. Chapter 6

“Norman fucking Osborn? The owner of Oscorp Industries?” Sean asks. The phone was apparently loud enough for him to hear.

“This makes zero sense... There... There must be two of my father as well. Two of me, two of him.”

Sean grabs the curls at the side of his head. “Yeah, I guess that’s... No, no. Norman Osborn is alive and in _New York_ like your dad is! You’d think, being big shots, networking everywhere, someone would notice that they _look the same_.”

Eduardo starts dialing another number.

“Who are you calling?”

Eduardo waits out the ringing.

“Eduardo, who are you _calling?_ ”

“My father.”

Sean leaps towards him and snatches the phone from his fingers.

“Are you an idiot?!”

“I need to ask him for the truth,” Eduardo says sternly.

“He’s tricked you. He’s conned you. You don’t want a psycho like that knowing you’ve caught on!”

“Give me the phone.”

“No.”

“ _Give me the phone!_ ”

“Eduardo, did you hear me? You can’t tell him you know!”

“I need to know what’s going on!”

“Then let’s figure it out some other way!”

Realizing Sean’s paranoia might be a positive in this situation, Eduardo steps back and sits on a nearby armchair.

“Let’s start with your dad. We’ll check if he really is Nathan Saverin. Where does he work?” Sean says calmly.

It’s a straightforward question. Eduardo’s brain can handle straightforward questions.

“Gregson Corporation.”

“In New York?”

“Yes.”

“And before that?”

“Gregson. It’s always been Gregson. In Brazil too. And when we moved to Miami, he was always coming up here.”

“Right there! That sounds suspicious.” Sean jabs his finger out at him. “Why didn’t you two move to New York if he spent so much time here?”

“He had a smaller business in Miami. He’s sold it since then.”

“Hmm. Have you ever tagged along with him to his office? Met any of his colleagues?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“We hardly spent any time together.”

“Eduardo, have you got any proof whatsoever, other than his words, that he works at Gregson?”

Now Eduardo is sensing things crumbling. “I’ve seen business cards.”

“Wow, how official,” Sean says, and Eduardo is pretty sure he mumbles “Like ‘I’m C.E.O., bitch’” right after. “What’s his position?”

“C.F.O.”

Sean takes out his cell and punches something into it. He starts scrolling through a webpage. Then through the speakerphone so Eduardo can hear, he makes a call.

“Hello, Gregson Corporation. How may I help you?”

“Hi, can you connect me to Nathan Saverin?”

“One moment...” the receptionist says and they hear some shuffling in the background. “I’m sorry, did you mean Nathan Senna? There’s no Nathan Saverin here.”

Eduardo’s hands get cold.

“What about Norman Osborn? I need to talk to him,” Sean says.

“His office isn’t located here. He’s only a shareholder, as far as I know. You’ll have to call Oscorp.”

Sean says goodbye and ends the call while Eduardo sits there, dumbfounded.

“I don’t understand. Why has been lying to me?”

“No clue, man.”

Eduardo’s thoughts leap back and forth from Peter’s life to his own. Mr. Saverin is Eduardo’s father. And Harry’s. When Eduardo was a teenager, was he taking trips to New York to visit Harry? Those were the “business trips”? He had two families? What’s with Peter, then? Peter doesn’t share the same father, yet he looks just like Eduardo. How’s he connected?

"None of this is making sense,” Eduardo says. He’s got his eyes covered and he rubs at them.

“Here’s what I know about Norman Osborn,” Sean begins. “He founded Oscorp, a company that develops tons of new technologies and does scientific research like cross-species genetics... That’s where Dr. Curt Connors worked, the man who turned into the Lizard. Remember that? They do craziest shit there, so... so... maybe you and Peter were part of their studies.”

Eduardo’s eyes widen. “Peter’s parents worked there! Mrs. Parker told me. They had to leave him with her to keep him safe from... whoever.”

Sean bounces up in excitement. “It’s all connecting! Eduardo! Norman Osborn maybe wanted Peter for something, all that time ago... but Peter’s parents took him to May and Ben. Okay, okay... So then Osborn found him again, years later. Made him disappear. Killed him, possibly.”

Eduardo was so confused and overwhelmed he didn’t need any concrete proof to believe it.

“Then what do I have to do with any of it?” Eduardo says. “It doesn’t explain why me and Peter look the same, like – Peter’s father is Richard, and mine is Nathan – sorry – Norman. And Harry is my father’s son too?”

Once he says that, has all those blood links tied together, Eduardo feels something about to snap. 

“Sean... Someone doesn’t fit.”

Sean seems to catch on. He goes over to the laptop to study the graduation photo. “Harry looks way more like your dad than you do.”

“I don’t fit?” Eduardo says. He’s fighting to keep his voice full and steady.

“I don’t know, man.”

“It comes back down to the question of whether me and Peter are the same person, or if we’re two separate people,” Eduardo says.

He thinks back to Kate Westin, how she doesn’t remember him. Theoretically, that’s all of high school gone. September 1997 to June 2002. It doesn’t matter how Eduardo has memories of Gulliver Prep in his brain; it’s more important to determine when Eduardo started existing. His bank account works, his millions are in it – it’s paying for his apartment in Seattle, paying for his hotel suite right now. So Facebook had to have happened; he was there for it. That was his second year at Harvard, autumn 2003.

Facebook. Mark. The next link was Mark. He and Mark met in the school year before, winter 2003. What about Dustin? He met Dustin earlier... 2002. October 2002. That brings Eduardo disturbingly close to Peter’s disappearance.

Now for the summer of 2002. Eduardo had a desk job in Miami. He had to prove that now... Yes, that had to have been real – a guy who worked there with him, a journalist now, called him six months ago asking for an interview. He remembered Eduardo from that summer. And before then... Eduardo was at Gulliver.

There’s the break. It’s not a perfect match to the time of Peter’s disappearance, but it aligns well enough. Early summer 2002 – by that time, Peter Parker ended and Eduardo Saverin came to be. One body, two identities.

After he explains this to Sean, Sean comes out with: “We need more proof of your non-existence than a high school buddy’s amnesia. We can contact more of your old friends.”

“I want something more definite than that, that goes back to my time in Brazil. I’m talking records. Not just mine either, but my parents’. Medical records, maybe.”

“Does the Brazilian law let you access those? Here in the U.S., you can request to see your own and only your own. Otherwise, no one can access someone else’s record.”

“Same in Brazil.”

“Then how are you gonna do that?”

Eduardo gives him a significant look.

“Oh,” Sean says, suddenly uncomfortable.

Sean refuses to hack into any systems on that level. He says that unlocking a person’s personal laptop with permission is nothing, and doing anything beyond that is where his paranoia kicks in. He speed-talks about being under surveillance, how he can’t afford getting caught. He suggests a few friends in town and that isn’t very helpful – “There’s Jay from Plaxo. I can call him – oh wait, he went to prison a month ago.”

Their only resource left is the Facebook team. They call Dustin.

He’s chirpy when he hears Eduardo on the end of the line, however it’s gone once he hears Sean. He deduces there’s an emergency given that Eduardo and Sean choose to be together. 

Dustin will land in New York by the early morning hours. Freaked out over Eduardo, hacking from Palo Alto is an intolerable notion to him. Eduardo doesn’t go into detail about what he’s hacking into, but Dustin gets the sense that Eduardo’s mental stability is at risk, and he isn’t going to leave his friend alone during a breakdown. Sean says it’s just as well that Dustin comes to New York and mumbles something about phone tapping.

Eduardo manages to get a few hours of sleep during the night from sheer emotional exhaustion. As bad as he wants to get answers, it’s better that he can cool off and get a grip. In his waking hours, he draws diagrams and writes out other theories to explain the insanity of his situation. He absentmindedly rubs the side of his thigh. A scar is there, a splatter of white tissue. Eduardo recalls changing in his dorm room, Mark standing at the doorway, waiting for him. Mark spotted the scar and asked what happened.

Eduardo told him his dog bit him when he was fourteen. It wasn’t a deep bite, and it wouldn’t have scarred so badly if his father was home to drive him to the hospital. He ruined a rug with his blood, and he had to hop on one leg to the kitchen on the other side of the house, no help, to get bandages.

Without knowing it at the time, Eduardo had told Mark an elaborate lie. Peter has the real story of the scar, the Peter who might be hidden in Eduardo’s head somewhere. Strangely, it’s a relief. Eduardo doesn’t want that memory of himself bleeding, nearly fainting from the trickle of blood down his leg, and feeling worthless and abandoned due to his father’s absence.

* * *

Sean comes back from the airport. He opens the hotel suite door, and Dustin comes in behind him. He throws off his school bag and hugs Eduardo.

“Wardoooo! I’m happy to see you. I’ve been on an overnight flight, but I’m happy to see you!”

“Hey,” Eduardo says. Eduardo can’t muster up any appreciation for Dustin’s presence. Not on three hours of sleep and a possible upheaval of his life.

“On the ride over, Sean told me what’s up. I could eat my own socks, it’s that crazy.”

Dustin starts setting himself up at Peter’s laptop. He takes out his own laptop too and plugs a few cords in. Eduardo’s never learned about hacking, he doesn’t know what Dustin’s doing.

At some point, Sean exits the room quietly. Dustin notices this, looking a bit nervous from the way his eyes shift between the door and Eduardo. A minute later, Sean’s rattling the door open.

“I’ve got a surprise,” Sean says to Eduardo, grinning mischievously.

“I don’t want anymore of those.”

Mark steps into the suite.

“Hi,” he says.


	7. Chapter 7

Eduardo goes still, every muscle does. His jaw, his limbs, and as pure anger inundates his chest, he stops breathing too. Other than his father, Mark is the worst person who could be around him right now.

“What are you doing here?” he asks in brusquely.

Stone-faced and with a shrug, Mark replies, “To study the hotel’s interior design.”

Eduardo purses his lips and glowers at Mark, wanting him to be completely aware of how unwelcome he is.

“Sean’s told me what’s going on. I don’t think I totally get it. Either way, I’m sorry it’s happening.”

No sympathy is in Mark’s voice, not that Eduardo expects him capable of having any. It’s said blankly. Everything Mark does is done blankly.

“Right,” Eduardo says.

“Your dad’s always been a dick.”

“Don’t talk about him,” Eduardo snaps. Presumptuousness. Eduardo doesn’t like presumptuousness in anybody when it comes to the dynamic between him and Mr. Saverin. In Mark, he especially hates it.

Like a referee blowing his whistle, Dustin says, “Umm... Wardo! How about Mark helps with the hacking? He’s better at it than me.”

“Whatever,” Eduardo says. Doesn’t matter who it is, so long as they know what they’re doing and they get it done.

Mark joins Dustin and soon they’re getting into code-speak. Sean dives into the discussion too. The plan is to hack into the medical records of Hospital Paulistano in Brazil. Both of the Saverin parents and Eduardo stayed there at some point while they lived in São Paulo. Mrs. Saverin gave birth to him there and died there, Mr. Saverin once stayed because of a minor heart attack, and Eduardo broke his ankle and had his treatment there.

Having Mark in his New York hotel suite, flip-flops, curls and everything, is an incongruous sight. Mark belongs at Harvard, between its buildings and in its classrooms and then beside a lawyer. Here, Mark had to grate himself in, and in doing so, became too much of a rough shape to go unnoticed.

Eduardo walks out onto the balcony, his brain bursting with aggravating memories of Mark, solidifying his resentment. He can’t control them. What’s worse is that whatever the status of his existence is, these past events happened.

_“You’re gonna blame me because you were the business head of the company, and you made a bad business deal with your own company?”_

_“A total of $19,000 now,” Eduardo’s lawyer said._  
 _“Yes,” Eduardo replied._  
 _“Hang on...” Mark said, scribbling on paper. “I’m just checking your math on that. Yes, I got the same thing.”_

_“He’s set up other meetings?”_  
 _“Yes.”_  
 _“Without me knowing anything about it?!”_

Dustin slides the screen door open.

“Hey. Mark’s on really on top of the hacking,” Dustin remarks.

“Good.”

He gestures toward the desk, where Mark is typing away.

“I’m sorry I told him I was coming here. I tried to tell him to stay in Palo Alto. He wouldn’t listen,” Dustin says.

“Figures.”

“Give him a chance. You know he’s here because he’s worried about you. He wants to help.”

“Worried about me?” Eduardo says. “He has a sympathy function now? Has someone downloaded a new program into him?”

“You did,” he says.

Eduardo shakes his head. Mark’s here for selfish reasons. He’s here so he can declare to his Facebook minions that he and the guy who sued him are on good terms, that he’s really a nice guy and nobody can hold a grudge against him. He has forgiven Eduardo as much as Eduardo has forgiven him, which is not at all.

During the deposition, Mark showed his deep annoyance through pinched expressions, and from that, Eduardo can tell what Mark thinks of him now. Mark sees Eduardo as a melodramatic manipulator who exaggerated how much Sean influenced the company and who made Mark out to be a cutthroat bastard. Eduardo did it for money and out of unjustified spite because how did Mark do anything wrong?

Dustin presses himself against the brick railing, spreads his arm and goes, “I’m flying, Jack!”

Eduardo’s sunken into distress though. All this Peter Parker stuff, the possibility of his father being a fraud... That would be another betrayal alongside Mark’s.

“Hey man...” Dustin says, noticing Eduardo’s scrunched-up face.

“I’m horrified,” Eduardo murmurs.

“Dude, it’s not –” Dustin starts patting his back. “It’s not, you know, the end of the world... Damn it, I wish Chris came. He’d know how to perk you up, even in a situation like this that involves mad science and con artists. He’d know what to say. I don’t.”

“It’s okay.”

Eduardo managed to gather himself by the time Mark knocks on glass of the door and states, “Wardo. I’m in.”

“Search for Nathan Dimas Saverin,” Eduardo says to Mark when they’re at the desk. His hands are freezing cold, he’s that nervous.

“No results,” Mark says.

“Search for Laurinda Natalia Saverin.”

“No results.”

“Search for me.”

“No results.”

Mark turns around in the chair, looks right at Eduardo. Sean stares as well. Eduardo doesn’t care that they are. All he registers is his whole sense of self caving in.

Dustin comes up and squeezes his elbow. Automatically, Eduardo steps away. No, he actually doesn’t want anyone around. They pick up on this and leave the suite.

He’s not angry with his father, he can’t be angry until he knows why he did this. He’s just panicked by the strange feeling of watching himself slip into a void.

He rushes out of his suite and out of the hotel. He whistles a cab over, leaps in, orders the driver to be quick.

“Oscorp, get me to Oscorp Tower.”

By the time Eduardo gets to Oscorp, his nerves have steadied. It’s good because no one’s alarmed as he strides through hallways, and the receptionist doesn’t feel his aura of animosity.

He finds Mr. Saverin in a giant shiny meeting room, standing at the end of the table.

“Norman? _Norman Osborn?_ ”

People around the table peer at him. Whatever.

His father casually asks that they leave the room. They do, and he goes to lock the door. When he faces Eduardo, he’s smirking.

“I see you’ve figured it out. I suspected you did, after our dinn-”

“Tell me everything. Why you did it, how you did it.” His voice satisfyingly loud and authoritative. He’s learned it from the man in front of him.

Mr. Saverin puts a hand in the pocket of his pants and swings one of his legs a little. Still smirking.

“I did it for a number of reasons,” he says in his quiet voice. “A person needs many reasons to do what I’ve done. I’ve done it out of revenge. You’re Peter Parker and Peter Parker’s gotten in my way many times. And you let my son die.”

“How?”

“Peter didn't stop Electro from destroying the building Harry was trapped in.”

“Electro? Fuck you. You’re lying!”

“I’m not lying. I see you haven’t found the major key to this.”

Eduardo says nothing, just waits for him to continue.

“When was the last time Spider-Man was seen? It was five years ago, April 25th, 2002, according to the newspapers. The day Peter disappeared. Fairly coincidental.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You will once I finish explaining what I did to you,” Mr. Saverin says, unbothered.

He explains it all and it leaves Eduardo incapable of speech. He’s stunned and his expression is making Mr. Saverin chuckle. His father watches him step out of the meeting room numbly. Wanting to see more of Eduardo’s distress, he follows him right to elevator. Eduardo gets in alone. The walls in the elevator are metallic, reflecting his face and figure. Eduardo bows his head until the doors slide open to the main floor.


	8. Chapter 8

He goes back to the hotel. He goes to his suite. The whole way there he memorizes license plates, it’s his method of not going crazy.

“Eduardo, thank God! We’ve been calling you!” Sean exclaims.

Mark and Dustin are in the suite too. Eduardo stares at them. They’re a real part of his life. During university, Eduardo was real, maybe not based in real past, yet it was good enough for him.

“Eduardo?” Dustin asks.

Eduardo turns to Mark, muttering his name. He’s said Mark’s name so many times, more than anyone else’s, probably.

“You should lay down,” Mark says.

That’s a voice he’s actually heard too. Not like the voice of Kate Westin or his nanny in Brazil.

“Hey. Hey. Remember that night at Kirkland when we hid all of Chris’s stuff, even his desk?”

“Yeah.”

“That was so funny,” Eduardo says. “Dustin, do you remember?”

“Yeah... Really funny...” Dustin says, concerned.

Something thuds on the balcony. The screen door shatters.

Stepping through the shards of glass is a muscular figure of scaled skin, the colour of jade. He wears two grimy violet gloves, and across his abdomen hangs a small satchel. He stinks of burning rubber and chemicals. The face is a gargoylian mask – the jaw unhinged, the amber eyes motionless and wide open.

Eduardo would’ve thought he was hallucinating the creature. He doesn’t think that – the instant Eduardo sees him, something amongst his brain cells lurches loose – and accesses Peter.

Peter’s seen the thing before, knows him to be the Green Goblin and, underneath the costume, Norman Osborn. He’s not thrown by his frightening appearance, only by the suddenness of his entrance.

“Do I look familiar?” Osborn asks mockingly.

“Yes.”

“The real show can begin...”

The curtains open, unveiling Eduardo-Peter at the centre of the stage, and Sean, Mark, and Dustin are there to watch.

The first flashback arrives in Eduardo’s head. Peter is playing cards with Aunt May and Uncle Ben. It’s hot in the room; Peter’s t-shirt sticks to him. The lamplight makes Uncle Ben’s white hair a soft orange.

“My name is Peter Parker,” Eduardo says to both himself and to Mark, Sean, and Dustin. The second after it comes out, he goes, “No, I’m Eduardo. Eduardo Luiz Saverin. I was born in São Paulo, Brazil.” His voice accentuates the city name perfectly. He’s Eduardo, of course he can say it perfectly.

He says it again: “Saw Pawlo.” It’s Peter. “Saw Pawlo. My name is Peter Parker.”

Eduardo hears this, and, horrified by what his lips can’t pronounce, states, “I’m _Eduardo._ I founded Facebook with Mark. Mark Zuckerberg.” Something else slips out and it’s what’s being said in the memory he’s using to ground himself as Eduardo. From the hallway of the Palo Alto house:

“I need you out here. What did you just say? Don’t tell him I said that...”

And then: “Peter. Where do you go? Who does this to you? Please go to sleep, Aunt May. Aunt May, _please, please, please_ go to sleep... How much were your shares diluted? How much were his?”

Gwen slides into his arms, her back pressed against his torso. In front of them, Mrs. Stacy holds a camera. The flash goes off. Gwen’s youngest brother giggles at them from the next room.

He slides Gwen into his arms. She’s limp. Wet with blood. The Goblin has killed her, only to pain him. It works. Grief and guilt slams into him.

About ten hallways branch off the main foyer of Gulliver Prep. Conversation between the students make the place noisy. Eduardo’s nervous, doesn’t know what hallway to choose to get to homeroom; it’s his first day here.

Aunt May hugs him. He’s so sore.

His vision’s gone blurry. He’s on a cushioned seat that’s angled like a dentist’s chair. He’s just waking up. Osborn is at his side and pokes a needle into his arm. Trying to make sense of how he got here, he realizes Osborn kidnapped him and is doing something harmful to him. He punches him, and Osborn barely reacts to it because the blow was ridiculously weak. What’s happened to his strength? Why is his vision is blurry? Exhaustion takes him. He goes unconscious.

The dog digs its teeth right through his pants, making Eduardo scream out. He hits the stupid animal in defense, and it bites his thigh again.

Nighttime. Captain Stacy has let him go, and he starts swinging to Oscorp Tower to stop the Lizard, but he hears a shot fired and he feels something small penetrate his thigh. He keeps moving.

The portrait of Mrs. Saverin is on his bedroom wall.

He grabs the fire extinguisher. Aims it for the fiery bucket that’s been tossed over on the sheet.

Explosions. The Vulture’s swooping down toward him.

He wakes up on that chair again. “Eduardo Saverin... is that your name?” Mr. Saverin is asking. Yes, that’s is his name. Why is his father asking that? Where are they? A memory flashes in him, one that doesn’t feel like it belongs to him: He’s been thrown on the pavement, in a city somewhere that’s not São Paulo, and he aches everywhere. Hold on, isn’t Peter his name? Yes it is. This is Osborn beside him, he’s messing with his brain. He was never in Brazil, he was always in New York. A needle goes into him and the injection knocks him out before he can fight.

Fire again. Harry’s in it. Peter’s trying to find a safe place to attach his web. Panic. Panic.

Uncle Ben twists the Rubik’s cube. 

He reads Mark’s new journal entry from his computer screen: _Erica Albright’s a bitch. Do you think..._

The memories keep coming, interrupting each other. Someone grasps his arm. He’s not sure if it’s in real life or if it’s Uncle Ben’s touch as he guides him onto a subway platform. 

He’s laying on the floor of the suite. Wait, this is the pavement and there are policemen above him. His fingers are clasped around something solid. He hears Gwen’s voice. Flash’s and Dustin’s. The bits of conversation play and play and Peter listens, Eduardo listens. He catches his tongue moving, and maybe he’s saying this all out loud as they play in his head. Sometimes it’s in Portuguese.

“Wardo!” someone screams over him, and Uncle Ben’s speech, his “moral obligation to do those things” speech goes over top of it, then Mr. Saverin is yelling at him about his grade in English class. A moment later, he’s in a lab, Osborn telling him he’s Eduardo Saverin and he went to Gulliver Prep, that he’s a great student, but his father wants his grades to be perfect, that he had a nanny named Talita.

Every memory packs so many feelings, many kinds like grief, resentment, disgust, betrayal, and lots of guilt. He’s guilty for letting Gwen die. Harry. His uncle. He misses them. So much. He’ll implode. 

He gets up on his feet. He wants to see Aunt May. She’ll take care of him.

He hardly knows her though. He only met her twice so far.

The balcony of the suite... He runs to the balcony, the Goblin letting him pass. He’ll swing from it and go to Aunt May’s.

His friends are screaming things. The Goblin comes between them and him.

Another hotel sticks out on the other side of the street. Easy target for his webbing. He hoists himself onto the railing, sits on it.

“ _Eduardo!_ ”

He starts extending his arm toward the hotel.

“EDUARDO! Don’t!” That’s his name. Being said in Mark’s voice.

He then realizes Eduardo can’t swing on webs, and neither can Peter anymore. Suddenly horrified, he gets off the rail. More memories. Mostly of gravity, the downward sensation when he’d swing. His brain is really malfunctioning now, it wants to shut down. Blackness on both sides of his vision squeeze the centre. He leans forward. Meets the coldness of the floor.

***

The person who wakes up is both Eduardo and Peter. A hand is on his hip, rocking him forcefully.

“You gotta get up, man,” Sean says. “You okay?”

“How are you feeling?” Dustin asks.

This is question Eduardo registers. No memories are assaulting him, he recognizes where he is, and why he’s there – in his hotel suite in New York, staying there for a business trip. Then he learned about Peter Parker.

He props himself up on his elbows. It simultaneously feels like it takes effort and no effort at all. It takes effort for Peter, who’s used to his body being strong. He’s in a weak body now, the muscles have gone unused for five years, everything feels heavy. To Eduardo, it’s normal.

The two lives have lined up neatly along each other, and today they’ve joined. Eduardo has Peter’s life added to him, and vice versa. Eduardo knows a lot about photography and biology, and Peter knows a lot about meteorology and business.

“I’m... sane,” Eduardo concludes. That’s it though. He slumps back into the mattress, disoriented by the greatest sense of loss possible. He doesn’t find himself familiar anymore, this Peter/Eduardo hybrid.

“Holy fuck, you scared us,” Dustin says.

“I don’t want to know what I was doing.” 

“The Goblin took Mark,” Sean says. “We couldn’t stop him.”

Rather than shocking him, the news disheartens Eduardo more. This was Osborn’s final predictable blow, which was to kill the person who was most important in Eduardo’s life. Hurting Peter wasn’t sufficient.

“I don’t care anymore,” Eduardo says.

“He told me and Dustin that he’ll be waiting for you. He wants a fight. He’s given you a time limit. You have six hours left to get to him or he’ll kill Mark. He’s on top of Mansell Tower.”

“He’ll kill Mark whether or not I face him.”

“Wardo...” Dustin says.

“I can’t save him.”

“The Goblin told us you’re Spider-Man. You can take him down.”

“My fath– Osborn degenerated my power. He injected buckets of formula into me until it was completely gone. And power is what’s essential here to be of any good use. My Uncle Ben knew that.”

Dustin looks at Sean like, “Oh yeah. He’s not just Eduardo anymore.” Eduardo pulls the blankets over himself. Again, the weight is heavy but light at the same time. How can these frail limbs punch someone out? He remembers what it was like to hit someone, to dizzy them. It scares the Eduardo part that he knows that. He just... isn’t grasping his whole being, what he’s supposed to be like _now _. He can’t see what he is.__

__“Get up!” Sean demands, dragging the blanket off him. “Do something! If only for Mark’s family and friends.”_ _

__Eduardo feels no motivation. All he feels is himself, a doubled version he doesn’t know how to function in. There’s so much of him. Yet twenty years aren’t really there, and while Osborn was insufferable to him in those years, the good things he wanted to keep – Mrs. Saverin, the inside jokes between him and his friends, his favourite spot on the beach, and his nanny. None of that is there anymore._ _

__There are so many other issues. Gwen and Captain Stacy, the rest of the Stacy family, Mark, Harry... On top of that, New York’s been turned upside down by the Six, that group whose members included Electro, Kraven and the Vulture. He hasn’t been around to stop them._ _

__On cue, a helicopter flies over the hotel._ _

__“Where did I go?” he asks and his voice cracks at the end of it. He’s referring to Eduardo as much as he’s referring Peter, to the person who’s only Eduardo and only Peter, not this jumbled amalgamation of a person he is now._ _

__He turns away from Dustin and Sean and sticks his face in between the pillows to cry._ _


	9. Chapter 9

Neither Sean or Dustin know what to do with Eduardo like this, and to save their friend some dignity, they go into the next room.

Eduardo can’t be helped. Every thought gravitates to something depressing. The Goblin’s succeeded. He’s been crushed by him, every bit of him, down to the recesses that hid resilience.

He knows it’s stupid, but Eduardo feels like he’s been deserted by his father, regardless of how made-up that father was. Being rejected and unloved by him is independent of the simple feeling of being his son. No matter how delicate their connection was, it was supposed to be permanent, it was blood after all. Because of that, his father couldn’t cut Eduardo out completely, it was the anchor that made sure his father wouldn’t ever leave him.

His life as Peter at least saves him from any sense of betrayal. This doesn’t feel like the moment he read the papers that confirmed his diluted share, no, it’s not like that. He’s fought the Goblin and his link to him is made of animosity. To Peter, all Osborn is, is an enemy. When ruthlessness is the only thing he expected, there isn’t betrayal.

When Eduardo can get up, he’ll go home to Aunt May’s and stay there forever, doing nothing. He’ll quit his job and live off his settlement money for the rest of his life. That’s the best case scenario if he lives. It’s also an unlikely scenario. Osborn won’t let him live – Eduardo’s gotten in his way too many times as Spider-Man, infuriating him. He wants the pleasure of killing him. It’s what to anticipate from insanity, which is what’s mostly driving Osborn. There’s that little bit of vengeance too, for Harry. Probably the only fragment of him that shows Osborn’s capable of love.

Sean comes in and sits on the side of the bed. Eduardo forecasts an inspirational speech coming from him.

“Eduardo... You and me have never been on good terms and I’m gonna push that aside as of now,” Sean says. “If there’s one thing I admired in you, in _Eduardo Saverin_ , it’s that you’re willing to fight for yourself. The ads, the lawsuit... You get angry and you fight. I hope you stay like that.”

“Thanks,” Eduardo says in a Mark-ish tone.

Sean doesn’t move from the bed.

“We need to discuss this craziness, man,” he continues. “You need to shove your issues aside and deal with the immediate problem that is Mark, your damsel in distress.”

“I’ve lost, Sean.”

“No, you haven’t. You went a bit crazy and aren’t being level-headed. I’m trying to help you think clearly.”

Eduardo is pretty sure he is thinking clearly. He has no power, ergo, he can’t do anything.

“You really can’t let Mark die, man,” Dustin says from the doorway.

Eduardo thumps his arms against the mattress, and pulls at the sheets. “It’s not like I want him to.”

He can’t physically bear the amount of guilt in him, it’s weighing him down in the bed right there. By loving Gwen, Eduardo let her die. Like Captain Stacy predicted. Mark as well, Mark will die because he loved him. He’s practically nauseated by his uselessness, being incapable of saving him, and it’s extra agonizing that he’s done this before. He’s left Harry to die, another best friend. The fire was too intense, and Harry was too far away... Honestly, Eduardo couldn’t reach him without killing himself.

“Think of what solutions there are, okay? We... We can’t call the police. The moment Osborn knows they’re around, he’ll kill Mark,” Sean says.

Eduardo is hardly paying attention to him.

“You can bribe him. You’ve got, what, nearly a billion dollars?”

“Sean, you know that’s a lame idea,” Dustin says.

“Money talks.”

“The Green Goblin doesn’t have a history of committing crimes for money. He’s fixated on Spider-Man. The only thing that’s satisfying the Goblin is psychologically tormenting him.”

“Guys,” Eduardo says and sighs. “I know you’re trying to help, and I’m really thankful for that, but I’m done thinking about a problem that has no solution. Done.”

Dustin steps to the side of the bed.

“Wardo,” he says. “Let me ask one more thing...”

“Okay.”

“How did you get your nifty superpowers in the first place? Is there any way to get them back? That’ll make things way easier.”

Eduardo immediately recalls the dim blue room at Oscorp, spiders crawling down onto him. He remembers something else from a little while after that:

It’s Gwen leading Peter down a hall of the Stacy home, to her youngest brother’s bedroom. In it, the first thing Peter saw was a glass container full of spiders.

“Are those from –”

“Oscorp? Yeah,” Gwen said. “I heard Dr. Connors’s program is shutting down, now that he’s in jail. The spiders are going to be transferred somewhere else, I’m guessing. I thought it would be good to take a few of the kind that bit you. Maybe we’ll figure out what's so special about them.”

Peter nudges her shoulder. “Gwen. You’re living a life of crime. As Spider-Man, I’ll have to bring you to justice.”

She nods defiantly. “Yep.”

Peter smiles at her.

“My brother’s taking care of them.”

* * *

The possibility of getting his powers back is enough to get Eduardo into Sean’s car. Sean and Dustin are excited about it, while Eduardo is wary. There are two links on the chain here: Gwen’s brother needs to have kept those spiders, and the venom needs to work on him. Eduardo has no idea how Osborn took his powers out of him. His body could reject it this time around.

Along with Dustin, Sean and Eduardo drive to the Stacy's house. According to Peter’s brain, Gwen’s family moved from their original apartment after her father’s death, and into a place in Brooklyn. 

Sean and Dustin go to the house, and he doesn't. He can’t, that’ll freak out Mrs. Stacy and her sons. Dustin’s worried about her not letting in two strangers, though Eduardo is damn sure Sean will charm his way in. That’s his superpower.

Those powers work. Mrs. Stacy gestures for Sean and Dustin to enter. While Eduardo waits, he tries to keep himself composed – it’s quite something to be here, after being gone for five years and knowing Gwen’s bedroom must be empty. And then there’s her family in there, missing her.

Peter never got to fully grieve over her. Eduardo’s identity had taken over at the beginning of it. In a strange way though, being Eduardo offered some distance. She’s neatly packed into a few years of his past, and he’s okay that she can only be there and nowhere else in the future. He already lived a bit of the future. Kind of helps . Doesn’t help with the insane guilt.

He thinks of Harry, Harry who was sort of like Mark and maybe Eduardo became his friend for the same reasons... He saw someone fragile and automatically sympathized. Harry wasn’t a happy guy, mostly because of Osborn. Eduardo remembers his friend yelling into the phone during the evenings in their apartment, then seeing him balled up on the couch afterward, silent. Like with Eduardo, Osborn was as detached and disparaging with Harry, creating an inferiority complex the size of the Grand Canyon in his son.

Any potential happiness for Harry was interrupted by Eduardo’s failure to keep him alive. Like a little kid, Eduardo has to screw up his face and let out a sob. Only one sob is what he allows from himself. A second meltdown is not something his pride would be pleased with.

The heaviness in his chest eases up when Anthony, Gwen's youngest brother, comes leaping down the front steps. When Eduardo dated Gwen, he sometimes tutored Anthony. They teased each other like brothers would.

Eduardo gets out the car. Anthony has a jar in his hands, a spider inside.

Anthony stops. “I can’t believe it!” he says and starts running for him. Eduardo is thrown by how deep the boy’s voice is and his size.

“You’re bigger,” he says. Anthony’s kept the blondeness, but he’s in process of losing his prepubescent frame. He’s up to Eduardo’s shoulders now. Anthony gives him a quick hug.

“What grade are you in?”

“Seventh.”

“Sorry, you two, we gotta go!” Dustin says. He’s already gotten in the car, as well as Sean.

Eduardo smiles. “Don’t tell anybody I’m alive, okay? Not yet.”

“Are you gonna come back here?”

“Yeah.”

In the car, Dustin hands Eduardo the jar with the one spider in it. Eduardo recognizes it as the same kind he has in the vial at home. The home with Aunt May in it, that is.

“Unleash the spider! Let’s save some lives!” Dustin declares.

“We don’t know if this is going to work,” Eduardo says.

Dustin is so excited, he’s taken off his seat belt and sits backwards on the passenger’s seat to watch Eduardo. In remembering Dustin’s fanaticism at Harvard, Eduardo’s original reaction to laugh at him has turned into mild embarrassment now that Peter’s here.

Eduardo sticks his index finger into the jar. He pokes the spider a few times to annoy him.

The spider crawls up between two of his knuckles. That’s where it bites him.

Eduardo yelps and flings his hand out of the jar. The spider tumbles against the glass. The bite hurts more than he remembers.

“Is anything happening?” Dustin asks.

“Pain is happening.”

Eduardo’s told Dustin that it might be a few hours before he gets spidery, based on his first experience that involved a disastrous subway ride and the destruction of his bathroom. It doesn’t stop Dustin from asking “Is anything happening?” every two minutes during the ride.

Their second stop is Forest Hills. Eduardo recalls himself hiding his old mask in his room and the first working version of a webshooter – thank God he kept these old things as back-ups. He just didn’t know he’d need them after a kidnapping and brainwashing incident.

Halfway into the drive, Eduardo skims his fingers on his pant leg. Dustin’s watching. Disappointingly, the cotton of his pants don’t stick to them.

The spider characteristics haven’t shown up by the time they’re walking into Aunt May’s house. Like at the Stacy’s house, Eduardo has to suppress emotion, that feeling of being away from home for a very long time and coming back to it. He doesn’t make any eye contact with his aunt whatsoever. He knows he won’t be capable of hiding his feelings, and he doesn’t want her knowing that he’s back. Not when he has to get into danger again.

“Eduardo just wants to see if Peter left any CDs with more pictures on it,” Sean says.

“Oh, I know put one in the top drawer...” Aunt May says, eyeing Eduardo as he goes up the stairs.

“Thanks, Mrs. Parker!” Eduardo says, and it’s very bizarre to call her that.

He steps into his room and has to pause. His room. _His_ room. He feels his past, it’s heavier in here, and he’s fully conscious of the timespan of his life. He had the mind of a child for too long. His life dominated by years of being young, his grasp on adulthood isn’t as firm as it was before, it can’t be.

Eduardo goes into the closet. In the corner, his aunt left his father’s old brown briefcase, Richard Parker’s. Eduardo opens up the back pocket, and unhooks a surface of lining.

Just as he left it, his old webshooter and mask are in there. A container of web fluid is at the bottom as well. The webshooter won’t be that helpful, not without the armband, and not if there’s only one, however he’ll take it anyway. If there’s the opportunity, he can use it by pressing it to his arm and firing it.

Eduardo shoves all these things underneath his suit jacket. In doing so, he realizes he can’t fight in clothes that are this restricting. From the closet, he finds the only outfit of his that Aunt May stored away.

He goes back downstairs. Aunt May is baffled by the brevity of their stay. Sean’s incredibly smooth about it, promising they’ll be back later.

At the car door, Eduardo tugs at the handle and it snaps clean off.

Dustin’s eyes go wide and tackle-hugs him. Eduardo sighs in relief. Sean yells, “Hell yeah!” elated by the damage to his personal property.


	10. Chapter 10

In the backseat, Eduardo changes into his old t-shirt and pants. Luckily, they still fit him and don’t smell that musty. They feel too loose and heavy actually, but maybe it’s from years of wearing fitted suits. To feel more Eduardo-esque, he keeps his black suit jacket on. Before today, he wouldn’t have liked the hipsterly combination of it. Now he does.

Last thing is to load the old webshooter with the fluid.

“Here,” Eduardo says to Dustin after he does. “Test it.”

Dustin turns into a five-year-old. Eduardo doesn’t need to tell him where to place the webshooter or where the button is to activate the webbing. Dustin’s got it. He shoots at Sean’s hand.

“ _Dustin!_ Seriously? I’m driving. Get this shit off,” Sean says.

While they wait for Eduardo’s power to come back to him fully, they go to a grocery store. Like the first time he transformed, Eduardo’s ravenous. Peter’s past, always minding money, makes him feel absurdly liberated in front of all the food products. He’d buy the whole grocery store, the whole street if it was practical, now that he was the co-founder of Facebook. That’s a little much though. He settles with buying the most expensive organic food.

After he digests, that when he’s truly different. Things are more pristine to him, like the distance between the cars and their speeds. He notices the jiggling of the unused seat belt in the car. His eyes get blurry – he doesn’t need the contacts in his eyes anymore.

Now they need a space for Eduardo to practice in. Sean brings them to a sketchy abandoned building. Eduardo doesn’t need the answer as to why Sean knows of the place. They make sure no one’s around, and Eduardo starts crawling up one of the walls. He does jumps an acrobat would do and fancy kicks. He practices his punches a little, hitting the air. It’s surprising how natural every action is.

During a break, they sit down to discuss tactics.

“Think of the Goblin’s weaknesses,” Dustin says. “He has superstrength and agility, right? That’s what the internet message boards say.”

“Yeah, all true.”

“His strength really comes from his weapons. He tried to use his glider to decapitate you that time he attacked Empire State University. And he throws those weird bombs.”

Pumpkin bombs. The Goblin tosses them out of his bag, and gases come out, doing all sorts of damage to the senses. They’re particularly hard to avoid when he’s zooming around on the glider.

“He has the glove as well,” Eduardo adds. That was the biggest danger.

“Oh yeah!”

“Okay, so obviously I need to –”

“Take his toys away first,” Dustin finishes for him. “You do that and you’ve got a shot.”

“I’m assuming Osborn doesn’t know you could’ve gotten your powers back,” Sean pipes in.

“He probably thinks those spiders are long gone.”

“Use his ignorance against him. Walk in there, let him think you’re wimp, then boom! Go all out when he doesn’t expect it.”

“Why though?”

Dustin taps Eduardo’s knee. “Say you act weak, then you can get yourself on the glider and use it yourself. Or destroy it. He’d let you near it, thinking you didn’t have the strength to do anything with it.”

“Yeah, that’s... that’s a good idea, if I pull it off.”

“Three hours left,” Sean says, checking his Rolex.

“All right, well, I don't want Mark waiting any longer than necessary,” Eduardo says.

* * *

It’s getting close to sunset as they drive through Manhattan. Eduardo’s shaking, his Spider-Man confidence not at 100% capacity. Without the armband, his old webshooter isn’t user-friendly, it doesn’t let him swing himself around. That’s a significant disadvantage. He’s not in prime physical shape either. As he practiced, he wasn’t bending as easily as before or jumping as far and high.

Despite the shortcomings, he has a better chance than a few hours before. Knowing this, Eduardo’s getting pretty damn vengeful. Both identities have reasons for it. The Green Goblin had fought Peter numerous times, and Peter was frustrated that he’d ultimately get away after every encounter. And it doesn’t need to be said that Gwen’s death is a huge motivator. For Eduardo, his motivator is Mark. No matter how much you hate a person, their death is not an event to long for, not when you used to care about them.

All these reasons are in the whole of his self, of Eduardo-Peter. They don’t feel separate. Eduardo had Gwen, Peter had Mark. Combined, they house forbidding determination.

Sean pulls up along the curb. They’re a few blocks away from the Mansell building; Eduardo will walk the rest of the way. Here’s the moment Sean and Dustin exit the scene. They watch Eduardo shove the webshooter and mask into the inside pockets of his jacket.

“We’ll wait up for you. Get you back to the hotel,” Dustin assures him.

“Good luck,” Sean says.

“Thanks for all your help,” Eduardo says.

None of them go deeper than that. They don’t want to acknowledge the fact that he might die and never see them again. So Eduardo gets out the car and heads down an alleyway.

He walks for one block. No people around.

By himself, heading into danger, something that’s been at the back of his mind crops up: The only way out is to kill Osborn. Say Osborn lives, he could easily reveal his identity as Peter Parker, and he’ll undoubtedly find some other way of bringing Eduardo down, wherever he goes, prison or hiding in Tasmania.

Eduardo’s never killed an enemy before and now that he has to, it’s an especially difficult target. He can’t ignore how he feels – he feels like he’s about to commit a fundamental wrong, going against nature by killing his father. Take that factor out, and it’s still wrong: This is a person. Clearly he’s an insane one, except he’s driven partly by vengeance. For Harry. Isn’t that kind of revenge based in love? Then how can Eduardo kill someone who has that core human trait?

He can’t have these sentiments get in the way. It’s imperative to focus on the reasons he has to kill him. The Goblin was just the Goblin, deranged. He couldn’t have loved Harry, he was so cruel to Harry, he was lying when he said he was acting out of revenge. Probably. Anyway, this was survival, this was Eduardo protecting himself and everyone else in his life. For Mark and Aunt May, most of all.

The back of Eduardo’s neck starts to tingle. Something dangerous is behind him. He starts to turn around.

He gets scooped up by the waist and the ground below him gets further away.

It’s the Goblin gripping him. They’re on his glider, skimming over the rooftops. Before Eduardo gets used to the feeling of flight, Osborn settles the glider on top of Mansell Tower. Carelessly, he drops Eduardo onto the ground.

“Your Wardo is here!” Osborn yells grandly through the Green Goblin mask. 

The Goblin tugs at Eduardo’s forearm. The only-Eduardo wouldn’t be capable of keeping upright, so he makes sure he pitches himself backward and onto the ground. He lets Osborn drag him toward Mark, whose hands are tied around the rung of a metal ladder. The ladder is attached to the side of a shelter covering the stairwell to the roof.

“Mark!” Eduardo yells out on reflex. It’s undeniable that Mark’s scared – how could a ordinary person be calm in this circumstance? – yet he’s well-practiced in not showing these things. Eduardo believes though, that he sees Mark’s shoulders relax as Osborn drags him closer.

Osborn halts. He then punches Eduardo across the jaw. Eduardo fortunately, remains in character as Normal Human Being. He exaggerates the impact of the punch by whipping his whole upper body to the side and groaning loudly. This treatment is more or less what he expected – Osborn is weakening him and humiliating him in front of his friend.

Osborn laughs above him. Mocking him too, evidently. Aiming for the stomach, he punches him again. After this initial beating, he’ll make Eduardo watch Mark die.

Synchronized with Eduardo’s understanding of Osborn as a definite enemy, is the feeling that it’s his father who is injuring him, and it’s jarring, if only on the moral standard that a parent shouldn’t harm their child. Eduardo needs to get that out of his head in order to fight him. Osborn is not his father.

“Stop!” Mark yells as Eduardo curls his body and stops breathing like it really knocked the wind out of him. He’s nowhere near the glider and that’s okay. He has another situation he’s waiting for.

Osborn bends over him, goblin mouth agape. “Spider-Man... I want you to _fight_.”

Eduardo gives him a deliberately weak hit to the shoulder, which makes Osborn chuckle. More punches come Eduardo’s way, just a few. Osborn isn’t hitting him at his maximum strength either, in the assumption that a weaker punch is enough. The impacts are inconsequential.

At the hit to his skull, Eduardo pretends his whole body has gone limp from pain.

And Osborn does what Eduardo’s planned for, which is dragging him next to Mark. He folds Eduardo into a sitting position, and Eduardo acts like keeping himself upright is the hardest thing to do. He leans against the ladder, and Mark’s face is in front of his.

“Eduardo...” Mark whispers, voice hoarse. The stoicism hasn’t broken down. “Thank you for coming.”

“I won’t allow last words,” Osborn says coolly while adjusting the dirty purple glove over his hand.

Eduardo can’t be sure that he’s going to win this, so he feels that stab of cruelty thoroughly. Reasons to resent Mark become ludicrously irrelevant here. This is a friend he really, really cherishes. He’s this clever guy who comes up with the greatest ideas, just really fucking smart, working on this other level of reality, and he’s fun, nobody believes that he’s fun – so long as you keep up with him, he’ll make jokes, and in the right mood, he’ll be silly with you. He’s endearingly awkward and strange (who’s into the classics and fencing?) and despite all his money, doesn’t see its value, and it’s too bad hardly anyone sees any of this because he shoves people away so they don’t figure out that he’s actually vulnerable.

“Peter, you have a choice. I kill Mark with my glove or use a bomb,” Osborn says.

Mark lowers his head. His whole body shudders. Eduardo though, is gearing himself up. Featuring a lot of wincing, he picks himself up very slowly.

“Glove,” Eduardo says. He keeps his gaze steady on the Goblin’s gloved hand.

“Stay right there,” Osborn says sternly. “Look at his face.”

Eduardo shifts his gaze. Osborn, in an act of true heartlessness, forces Eduardo’s hand under Mark’s chin to lift his head up. Mark keeps his eyes closed. He’s grimacing a little. Like in many other ways, he’s opposite of Eduardo. He’s quiet through disaster, withdraws into himself and won’t explode like Eduardo would.

Eduardo struggles to not focus on him. He keeps his senses on Osborn.

“Now…” Osborn says from his side, and Eduardo discerns his arm rising up to aim at Mark. Here’s what he needed: a second when Osborn’s attention isn’t on him.

Eduardo pummels himself into Osborn, using the entirety of his strength. The hand that was cupping Mark’s chin is now grappling Osborn’s wrist. Osborn thuds against the rooftop floor and Eduardo immediately wrenches the glove off of him. He chucks it out of reach. In an effort to dizzy him, he pins Osborn down with his whole body and bashes at his inhuman face.

“Osborn, you have a choice. You consider me as an amazing actor or you consider yourself stupid,” Eduardo says.


	11. Chapter 11

Osborn grabs him by the shoulders and throws him off. Eduardo lands on his feet and makes a run at him. Osborn’s screaming, reaching the volume that blows out vocal cords. Eduardo’s never heard him that loud.

Before Osborn gets to swipe, Eduardo leaps over him, using Osborn’s head to propel himself clear over him and behind. Eduardo jumps onto his back, steadied by the spidery cling of his fingers.

Eduardo finds the strap of the Goblin bag and yanks it up and against Osborn’s neck. As Osborn fumbles on his feet and chokes, Eduardo says, “I’m sorry, I need to take this thing off. Manpurses aren’t in this season!”

Osborn topples backward so Eduardo has to jump off. He keeps his hold on the bag though, and takes it off of him in the process. He throws it off the roof. Two weapons down, one to go.

His enemy gets back on his feet. Yelling more, he charges at Eduardo. Now would have been a good time for functioning webshooters. Osborn is too quick for Eduardo to avoid, so he’s thrown onto his back. Osborn gets on top of him. 

Eduardo has to resort to old-fashioned punches. Osborn does the same, clocking both of Eduardo’s cheeks. These punches hurt. He begins absolutely thrashing at him and Eduardo thinks he’s hearing cracks from the parts of himself that shouldn’t bend. Osborn is raging, using every muscle to maul him.

Fortunately, Eduardo’s own hits hurt Osborn enough that he has to reel back for a couple seconds to orient himself. Eduardo takes the opportunity to seize his grotesque head in between his hands and twist. Something snaps, nothing major, Osborn is just too strong for that, but it’s enough pain for him to release the pressure off Eduardo’s body so it’s just dead weight on him. He crawls out from under him, and as he does so, Osborn makes no effort to stop him.

Osborn gets up and starts running away. Eduardo’s confused at first, then realizes he’s going for his glider. Eduardo chases him. Osborn starts hovering into the air. Eduardo gets underneath the glider. It’s not completely out of his grasp – he jumps for it, fingers hooking onto the tip of one metal wing. Like a seesaw, it dips to one side.

Having managed to keep his balance, Eduardo swings himself forward, and his feet reach the bottom of the glider and stick to it. In this position, he feels more like a baby monkey hanging off its mother’s stomach than Spider-Man.

Osborn notices this and bends his knees as much as he can to pry Eduardo off. It’s as small space to maneuver himself, yet Eduardo whips his arms away one at a time, changing their positions on the glider’s edge to avoid Osborn. Soon, Eduardo makes a grab for Osborn’s rubbery ankle and pulls. As he hoped, the Goblin’s centre of gravity alters, and the whole glider tips perilously to one side. The angle nearly has Eduardo upside-down. 

Knocking Osborn off this way doesn’t work. He regains balance, and they’re back at square one. Before his enemy tries to pry his fingers off again, Eduardo crawls up the back of the glider, and onto the Goblin’s back. Desperation making him reckless, he tries to choke him again, although if he falls, there’s no longer a rooftop below to land on. His reluctance to kill someone hasn’t faded, it’s animal instinct that has taken over throughout this fight, so he won’t let the Goblin go.

Eduardo uses his own weight to topple them over. He launches himself backward, gathers the momentum, and then rocks it forward. Osborn yelps, and Eduardo stops feeling grounded. He’s successfully gotten him off them glider, and now they’re both freefalling.

By instinct Eduardo reaches his arms out for anything to grab. There’s nothing at first, it’s just him and the air, then his wrist catches a cable. He seizes it immediately and the rest of his body swoops downward and sideways, and he’s a pendulum for a while. He sways close to a wall. The windows are like the ones of Mansell Tower. He swings himself onto it and sticks.

He wall-crawls his way up it. He doesn’t know where the Goblin has fallen, if it’s killed him or not, so he has to free Mark while he can. Mark. That’s the only person he’s going to think about. He’s not going to think about how wrong he feels for trying to murder someone a few seconds ago.

Now that he’s not being assaulted with punches, he pulls out his mask and slides it on. Just in time too; he hears a helicopter fly over. He scurries below a balcony, waiting it out. The ache of his jaw and the sores in all places he’s been hit are hard to ignore now. The throbbing is starting.

He gets back onto the rooftop, and finds a relieved-looking Mark. He feels his own hope replenish. This might have a happy ending. Eduardo laces his fingers underneath the rope that ties Mark’s hands and loosens it easily. Mark’s wrists are the whole spectrum of blue and purple. He gets to work on the rope around Mark’s ankles.

“Go and hide, all right?” Eduardo says.

“Okay,” Mark says.

The rope comes off and he helps Mark up.

“Where are you gonna be?”

“Here. I need to keep fighting Osborn.”

Mark furrows his eyebrows and purses his lips. A sudden memory comes to Eduardo, of Gwen, all the times she’d worry about him and straight up show it, telling him not to go away. What a contrast to Mark, who’s suppressing it all.

“Go. Please, you need to go.”

“Thank you. I mean, really, thank you...” Mark says without looking at him. “You’re a great friend...”

“Yeah, okay, great. Now go!” Eduardo says impatiently. Meaningful words can’t be said while you’re being hunted down by an evil villain.

Mark turns around and runs for the stairway shelter. Eduardo takes off his suit jacket and lays it on the ground. He’s too hot to keep it on. Something colourful turns up at the edge of his vision. It’s the glove. He runs over to it and puts it on. His only useful weapon. With it, he doesn’t need that webshooter.

There’s a strange lining in the glove, it’s heavy and stiff in some places. Cautiously, he mimics what the Goblin does with it: He points out his index finger. It sizzles and sends out a stream of electric sparks.

Eduardo does a couple practice shots, then goes over to the opposite end of the rooftop to look out. Before he reaches it, he sees something green clamber over the rail to his right. Lacking the glider, Osborn positions himself sturdily on the floor like this is a fight with formal rules. He looks toward the ladder and sees no one there.

“It’s a pointless effort you’ve made. After I kill you, I will find Mark again... I’ll do worse to him than what I did to Gwen.”

The Peter half of Eduardo comes out again. “Hey, just wondering – are you looking for girlfriend? I have an ex called Christy. I think you two would really hit it off. I mean, you’re both total psychos.”

“Witty.”

“Thanks, man!”

“You hide your self-doubt with it. You know you and Mark will die.”

“So perceptive. You done being menacing? Let’s fight.”

“You’ll be able to kill me?”

“Did you notice I knocked you off your glider? That was me trying to kill you.”

“Out of necessity. Mark is free. You have the choice to walk away.”

Eduardo goes silent, seriously contemplating running off.

The Goblin cocks his head, the amber eyes of the mask intimidating him. “Spider-Man isn’t an assassin. He’s virtuous.”

Eduardo looks at the Goblin, right at him, through the mask. When it comes down to it, there’s really only one thing preventing Eduardo. It’s not the notion of this being his father, he could get over that. What’s harder to cast aside is the belief that Osborn is a human being who loves his son.

“Can I ask you one thing?” Eduardo asks. “Are you really doing all this to avenge Harry? Because I think it might be for yourself, since I’ve been personally pissing you off for a while. It’s power. It probably has nothing to do with Harry... Does it?”

“All true. When Harry died... I felt like I was finally set free.”

That’s what makes Eduardo go from irresolute to resolute. There needed to be more reasons than basic survival and payback for Eduardo to kill Osborn. With that answer, Eduardo’s lost the sense of him as his father and as the father of anyone, of Harry. He’s lost the sense that he’s human. Osborn’s made it clear he’s truly a macabre of a person, a total aberration; it’s why he’s chosen the costume of a goblin. A goblin is something Eduardo can take out.

“Good to know,” Eduardo says.

The Goblin lunges at him. Before he gets too close, Eduardo fires the sparks from glove. It only slows Osborn down, so Eduardo has to jump away. He shoots at him again, which misses. He’s aware that beating Osborn to death is going to be a long process, so he has to stick to this method. The other option is to send him over the edge of the roof again.

They beat each other, sometimes kick. In the middle of shooting off a spark, Osborn nails him in the torso and it hurtles him several feet in the air. On his back, he lands on top of the stairwell shelter. He doesn’t recover quick enough, and this part of the battle is like their fisticuffs before – Osborn pins him down and they punch at each other on top of the shelter’s roof. The blows aren’t as mighty. Eduardo’s losing his strength. He points his finger to Osborn’s neck to send out more sparks, then sees the glove is missing. It slipped off somewhere.

The Goblin grins at Eduardo. The Spider-Man mask apparently didn’t conceal the shock of realization. Now he lifts Eduardo by the neck. Both his hands are clamped around him, starting the suffocation. Eduardo tugs at his arms and it’s no good. He stops all movement, unable to concentrate on anything that’s not the compression around his throat.

From somewhere below, a glass bottle soars by them and shatters. Osborn turns his head to inspect the source.

Another bottle smashes into straight into his face.

Disoriented, the grip around Eduardo slackens just enough for him to get some air, and his feet touch the ground. It allows him to jerk himself away from Osborn entirely. He coughs and heaves in air and as he does, he spots a moving figure on the level below. Mark.

Mark’s got another glass bottle in his hand, from where, Eduardo doesn’t know. He chucks it at Osborn as Osborn takes a swing at Eduardo. In the simultaneous effort to dodge the bottle, Eduardo barely needs to move to avoid Osborn’s punch.

Eduardo kicks Osborn to the edge of the shelter’s roof.

“Wardo!” Mark says and, spider senses sharp, Eduardo sees Mark throwing the old webshooter over to him in his peripheral vision. Without needing to look, Eduardo catches it, presses the contraption to his arm in one graceful swoop. It makes a fantastically recognizable winding sound as the webbing comes out of it and sticks to the Goblin’s mask.

Osborn starts peeling it off. Eduardo uses the pause in action to slam into him. They go falling off the shelter. Osborn is Eduardo’s cushion. While he’s on top, Eduardo pounds his head over and over, into the floor. Osborn has gotten weak too; his arms aren’t able to shove Eduardo off and his aim is terrible now that the webbing is obscuring his vision.

Five wild blows is what it takes for Osborn to start losing consciousness and stop flailing. Eduardo gets off of him and looks around the rooftop. He’s glad he sees Mark nowhere, and then finds what he’s looking for: The glove. He retrieves it and kneels down beside Osborn. With a shaking arm, Osborn reaches up to his head and peels off the goblin mask.

Eduardo sees the damage he’s done. Blood slicks back a section of Osborn’s hair, and his Adam’s apple repeatedly bobs up and down as he swallows involuntarily. The skin on his cheek is weirdly sunken and pale. Sweat on his face makes him seem feverish.

“Don’t do this to your... own father...” Osborn splutters out.

“That’s not gonna work on me.”

Eduardo doesn’t see the smashed-in face of his father. He’s not horrified by what he’s done.

“I took care of you... _meu filho_. Despite all our troubles, I loved you. Don’t kill me...”

Eduardo shakes his head. He lays his hand, the one with the glove on it, against the side of Osborn’s head. Eduardo digs his index finger to the temple.

Osborn brushes Eduardo’s forearm and does his best pitiful face.

“Don’t let me die...”

“Don’t worry,” Eduardo says, taking off his mask.

Then this is where the divide between Peter and Eduardo becomes distinct: Peter mocks his enemies. Eduardo scares them.

He leans over Osborn.

“ _Um homem sem um coração não pode morrer_ ,” Eduardo whispers.

He slides the Spider-Man mask back on.

It takes one shot from the glove to kill Osborn.


	12. Chapter 12

Eduardo finds Mark looking up into the sky, outside the main entrance of the tower.

“He’s dead?” Mark asks immediately.

“Yeah,” Eduardo says.

Mark bows his head. He starts doing something Eduardo’s only seen once before, and that was the moment after Facebook went live. He does that weird dovening thing right there on his feet, eyes closed. 

“Um. Can we hug it out?” Eduardo asks.

“Okay.”

Eduardo is pretty sure a split-second side-hug is all they had ever achieved during their friendship, so this full embrace, with Mark hooking his chin onto his shoulder, feels like they’re creating dark matter that’ll destroy Earth. Then it’s good, it’s great. It sinks in that he successfully saved someone this time. Before Eduardo gets properly emotional about it, he lets Mark go.

“Thanks for jumping in there. That was really awesome,” Eduardo says.

Too exhausted and dazed to say anything else, Eduardo and Mark walk down the block. Everyone on the street is calm. No one seems to have noticed a pair of falling superhumans and a glider. The police in the helicopters will eventually find Osborn’s body on the rooftop. That’ll be a huge story in the news, once it happens.

They arrive at Sean’s car.

“Behold! The hero hath saved his damsel!” Dustin exclaims, bursting from the car.

“You didn’t use the word ‘hath’ properly,” Mark says.

Dustin initiates a group hug, Sean included in it. Everyone’s careful with Eduardo, whose bones really can’t withstand more pressure, no matter how well-intentioned.

Sean starts his car up, asking if Eduardo needs medical attention. Eduardo’s Spider-Man memories tell him there are no cracked ribs or sprains. He’s no more than bent and bruised up. He stretches his legs over the backseat, let’s himself relax, not caring that Mark finds his feet in his lap annoying and dirty.

As they drive through Manhattan, Dustin yammers away.

“I can’t wait for this to be on the news! Me and my online Spider-Man friends will have so much to talk about. God, you’re _Spider-Man_! I’ve known Spider-Man for the past five years!”

“You’ve known _Wardo_ for the past five years...” Mark reminds him.

“Same difference!”

His friends are all in a good mood. Dustin keeps talking, and Mark beams a lot, beams at Eduardo. He’s in that kind euphoria that comes after escaping a deadly situation in one piece. Eduardo can’t pinpoint how he himself feels, just that it’s a step below happy. This Peter-Eduardo identity crisis is not going to leave soon, and saving Mark doesn’t reverse his failure to save Gwen, Harry, and his uncle.

He gets to be relieved though. It’s like Eduardo’s had long lingering illness, and he’s finally recovering. Osborn’s been thrown out of his life, there’s nothing ominous in the future. He’s gone.

***

Eduardo gets Sean to drop him off a couple streets away from Aunt May’s. He needs to ready himself to reunite with her, reunite properly.

“Can I talk to you alone?” Mark asks when Eduardo steps out onto the sidewalk. Eduardo gestures him to come forward. They walk far enough out of earshot of Dustin and Sean, who are in the car giving them not-so-furtive glances.

“Are you okay? I thought someone would be happier than this if they killed their arch enemy,” Mark says. He puts his hands in his hoodie.

“My life’s too complicated,” Eduardo says, without looking at Mark. “It’s sorta... depressing to learn most of you life didn’t happen. There’s not really an Eduardo Saverin.”

“There is. He’s been around for five years, suing me for five-hundred million dollars.”

Eduardo only smiles to show that he’s okay with a joke like that now.

“No... All that experience that made me the Eduardo you were friends with, the guy who knew about business and complained about how cold Boston was compared to Brazil... He’s not real either. How can someone ever really exist if they’re based on nothing?”

Mark’s jaw clenches, then he says, “That’s bullshit. If it makes any difference, you’re completely Wardo to me.” He’s talking forcefully and at hyper-speed. “I didn’t know you before Harvard, so you were real the whole time I knew you. Still are. I can live with the fact that your opinions about the cold weren’t based on real experience. I still ended up with someone who complained about it when I was trying to code.”

Eduardo shrugs.

“Do you see what I’m saying? The consequences of you believing you had a life in São Paulo and Miami are real. At least you have that.”

Eduardo contemplates this rosy logic. “Someday, I might be able to live with that.”

He’s still left empty, but another space in him fills with fondness for Mark. He forgot Mark was capable of dispensing encouragement – in other words, being a friend.

***

Eduardo waits at the side door. It’s not too late, his aunt should be up. He’s feeling those five years of being away from her.

She opens the door.

“Aunt May. I remember everything. I’m back,” he says instantly and embraces her.

“Peter... Peter...” Aunt May says between sobs and through a fantastically big smile.

Giddy, Peter rocks them sideways. Again, his two lives create two reactions. At the core, it’s made of the joy of finding what you’ve yearned for. Peter’s come back to the home he missed, and Eduardo finally has a home. It’s not a cold place like the mansion in Miami or Brazil, and Aunt May isn’t a nanny, it’s his family and she takes care of him and he takes care of her, and look how perfectly that reciprocates. There was Uncle Ben too, who did the same thing, the polar opposite of Mr. Saverin, it’s so bizarre and wonderful how different his uncle was from Mr. Saverin and amazingly fulfilling that Eduardo had love from him, and who cares if it was only for a little while, he at least had it.

“I’m so sorry for leaving you. So sorry. I didn’t mean to,” Eduardo says.

“It’s okay, Peter.”

He kisses her cheek twice. The hug is starting to hurt his ribcage. He won’t let go of her though.

Later on, he cleans himself up, uses the shower and knows where exactly to twist the handle for the temperature he likes. Peering into the mirror, he has a full fluorescent look at his face, one eye bloodshot, and a grandiose bruise spread onto the whole surface of his cheek.

He rests up for the remainder of the night in the living room with Aunt May. Aunt May doesn’t know how he became Eduardo, nothing like that, not yet anyway. She’s not in the mood to ask. Neither does Eduardo ask anything about the five years he missed at Forest Hills or about his other friends – Mary Jane and Flash. The day’s already been packed with revelations, he doesn’t want more.

They sit on the couch and watch bad sitcoms. They miss every joke and don’t know what the storyline is since Aunt May is trying to take in the reality that is her nephew, completely himself and more, resting his head on her shoulder. She says, “I can’t believe you’re really back” every few minutes, and Eduardo keeps saying, “Aunt May, I really am.”

Eduardo has his eyes half-closed. His concentration is on his temporary yet astonishing release from guilt and grief. Here at home with his aunt is the most peaceful place he could be.


	13. Chapter 13

In the early afternoon, Eduardo arrives at the hotel. He’s there to pack and check out.

On the way out of Forest Hills, the cab passed a restaurant he remembers taking Gwen and Harry to. Eduardo slid into grief again. Unlike Aunt May, those are two people he can’t return to.

Mark, Dustin and Sean are all in the suite. He sees Mark and has a warm feeling he hasn’t felt since Harvard, a real comfort and appreciation for him being around. It was inevitable. Mark put himself in danger to help Eduardo. It’s stupid to continue the resentment.

His friends hang around while he packs, talking about how crazy the last twenty-four hours were. They stay clear of Eduardo’s identity crisis until the well-meaning Dustin brings it up. 

“You okay with this I’m-two-people concept?”

Eduardo shrugs. “I feel overeducated... and like I’ve been young and immature for way too long,” he says lightly. He doesn’t want to get into it.

“It’ll suck for a while.”

“It mostly sucks having Sean as a cousin.”

“Ouch,” Sean says from the corner of the room.

“Wardo, your webshooters. Are you gonna build another pair soon?” Dustin asks excitedly.

“Yeah, planning to. I don’t feel on top of my game without them.”

“Could you like... take me for a ride when you get them done?”

Sean and Mark both snort. Dustin frowns at them dramatically.

“What? You mean you want me to swing you around romantically between the skyscrapers of Manhattan?” Eduardo asks, amused like the rest of them.

“Don’t laugh at me. I’m being progressive! I’m abolishing gender norms!”

“Is this a long-harboured sexual fantasy of yours?” Mark asks. “While we think about blow jobs, do you think of Spider-Man carrying you in his arms?”

“Christ,” Sean says.

“No way, man. I fantasize about _being_ Spider-Man. In reality, swinging with him is the closest I’m going to get.”

“Okay then,” Mark says.

“Wardo, answer me. Can you take me for a ride?”

“I... guess so.”

“Sweet! This is for the betterment of Western civilization, you know. Overcoming societal boundaries, that kind of thing.”

A while later, Dustin and Sean go down to the hotel restaurant for lunch. Mark at first agreed to go, then decided to stay behind when Eduardo said he wanted to finish packing.

Eduardo’s very aware of Mark in the room and where Mark is looking. It’s not out of awkwardness. It’s more like he’s trying to assess what it means to have Mark squeezed back into his life, and he needs to keep focusing on him for it to make sense.

“So are you gonna move to New York?” Mark asks. He stands near Eduardo, and he obviously doesn’t know what to do with his hands, the way he’s fiddling with the hem of his t-shirt.

“Yeah, I mean... It’s useless to be Spider-Man in Seattle. No bad guys there. The Six are here in New York, and I wanna make up for lost time with Aunt May.”

Mark nods. “I wanna ask you something.”

“Yeah, what is it?” Eduardo says and he’s kind of stirred up by this.

“Can we be friends again?”

“Yeah,” Eduardo says a little breathlessly, a smile breaking through. It’s pretty much what he expected. He nods his head vigorously. “Yeah.”

Mark chews his bottom lip, keeping his own smile from getting too wide. “Great.”

“So... So this means we forgive each other?”

“I don’t know. Keep it simple. I want to be friends with you. Don’t overanalyze why. And yes, I admit I was an asshole before.”

“Good enough.”

“I... yeah,” Mark says. “I’ll be in New York around Christmas to visit family. Do you wanna hang out then?”

Eduardo doesn’t hear the question. “I have something to say too...”

Mark blinks in surprise. “Okay.”

“I – I – I’ve realized you’re... like, you’re... “

“What are you saying?”

Eduardo’s massively and embarrassingly tongue-tied. This is what happened to him as Peter. He’d get flustered and forget how to form words, and he can’t believe it’s Mark who’s got him flustered. Mark’s suddenly back to being this great, smart, incredible, nerdy guy he wants to be attached to all the time, to share himself with because they work well together, and this is terrifyingly close to the way he was when he first talked to Gwen, and he can’t sort out the syllables in his mouth anymore. How, how is it possible he’s feeling this strongly for Mark? Eduardo doesn’t get what’s going on.

“Um, you’re... you know...”

“Wow, you’re awkward.”

Eduardo shakes his head as though it’ll loosen up his lips. “I know, I know, I’m not sure why I’m like this, I’m not normally like this – God – okay. Okay. I’m gonna say this, I’ll say this...”

Eduardo Saverin, Harvard alum and successful businessman, is eloquent. He’s capable of eloquence, so he just needs to concentrate on that personal trait. He takes a breath, and finally, he knows how to structure a sentence:

“Since Facebook, I kept calling you an asshole. I didn’t think you knew how to be a friend, but... you do,” Eduardo says, and to make his words clearer, he gets closer to Mark, places his hand on his arm and looks right into his eyes. Peter’s fumbling and shy manners have shaken off. This is Eduardo, and Eduardo is direct and unembarrassed with his feelings.

“I think you need to be, you know, a pretty compassionate person to take on an crazy evil villain the way you did... So I take it back. You were just, I don’t know, naive back then.”

“Naive is nice way of saying ‘asshole.’”

“You’re not anymore.”

“Well. Thanks.”

Eduardo squeezes Mark’s arm. It would be an appropriate moment for a hug, except that would for sure tear the Milky Way in half.

Mark totters on his feet, and Eduardo keeps looking at him warmly. There might be a slew of things that needed fixing up, and Eduardo’s happy that one part’s been put right, a really vital part no less, so it’ll make his days a bit easier.

As Eduardo and Peter, he’s realizing his whole self likes Mark a lot. When it comes to Mark, the divide between identities becomes a joyfully irrelevant problem. He’s completely and unconditionally wishing that Mark will stay with him and be close to him, all of him. He’ gone back to how he felt in Harvard, with more intensity, and, oh, so that’s why he got tongue-tied.

“I should check on Facebook stuff,” Mark says, gesturing to his laptop that he put on the desk. “Tell me when you’re done packing and we could get lunch.”

“Sure.”

“According to my calculations, I’ll have a solid half-hour because you’re going to brush the lint off all your suits, aren’t you?”

“Give me twenty minutes.”

“What, do your Spider-Man powers make you faster at brushing?”

“My powers enhanced my agility. Yeah, I’m probably faster at it.”

“The ability crawl up walls and efficiency in completing mundane household tasks. I’m envious.”

Mark sets himself in front of his laptop and Eduardo neatly folds his ties into his suitcase. It’s quiet in the suite. Soon, a helicopter will shake the air as usual, make noise. Before it comes, Eduardo can listen to Mark’s fingertips typing away on the keyboard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks thanks thanks for reading and leaving encouraging comments! Really didn't think there'd be an audience of more than 5 people for a Spider-Man/TSN crossover.
> 
> The basic storyline of this comes from this [great prompt](http://tsn-kinkmeme.livejournal.com/12119.html?thread=21888599#t21888599) on the kink meme. Shout out to Amentje!
> 
> Oh, and I depended on Google Translate and my French skills for the Portuguese in here. If an actual speaker is around and finds it faulty, do tell me.
> 
> All right, I'm done. Hope you enjoyed this. (I have ideas for a potential sequel but... we'll see...)


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